Humor hides in every tragedy, though you often have to hunt for it; on rare occasions, it lands right at your feet.
Tuesday delivered a surprising splash of humor. At a Washington press briefing, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel answered questions about the newest federal criminal charges brought against one of Patel’s predecessors, James Comey.
Those charges trace back to actions Comey took nearly a year ago. “Why at this moment?” reporters pressed.
“This investigation didn’t simply appear at this moment,” Blanche corrected. “It reflects extensive law-enforcement work over the preceding year.” Patel agreed: “This is a case that’s been examined for the last nine, ten, or eleven months,” he stated. “These matters require time. Our investigators proceed with methodical care.”
Eleven months of deliberate detective work—centered on a photo showing seashells arranged on a shoreline.
Last May, Comey shared on Instagram a photo of shells laid out to spell “86 47.” The number “86” has long been slang for “to discard” or “to eject,” typically used when turning away a customer. The number “47” clearly nods to the 47th president, Donald Trump. Some on the right occasionally urged “86-ing” Joe Biden during his term, and no one treated it as a covert assassination threat. Yet when an adversary detested by many used the phrase in reference to a political foe, some seized the chance to misread his intentions in bad faith.
“I didn’t realize that some people linked those numbers with violence,” Comey wrote at the time, after the partisan uproar machine started churning. “It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind, so I removed the post.” To prove his sincerity, he afterwards sat for an interview with the Secret Service to reassure them.
He was indicted yesterday in North Carolina on two counts accusing him of knowingly and willfully threatening the life of the president.
No exaggeration: given the visible legal absurdity of the charges paired with the evident malice of those pursuing them, this stands as a top-tier example of a compromised prosecution in the annals of the Justice Department. It’s arguably among the DOJ’s most dubious speech cases since the Supreme Court started outlining the boundaries of the First Amendment about a century ago.
Payback.
Don’t rely on me alone. Attorneys across the spectrum—from those favorable to Trump to those opposed or hostile—agree that the case reeks. “I’ve spoken with current and former prosecutors, federal prosecutors who describe this as the flimsiest federal indictment they’ve ever encountered,” ABC News’ Jonathan Karl reported this morning. “Even Trump’s own allies privately describe it as ‘embarrassing,’ or, as one well-known former Trump Justice official told me last night, ‘depressing.’”
Another former Justice Department official told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins bluntly, “This could be the worst case the DOJ has brought in my lifetime.”
There exist careful legal analyses explaining the reasons, with further commentary coming from Sarah Isgur and David French on the next Advisory Opinions. Yet you don’t require a painstaking constitutional dissection to grasp why the indictment should be dismissed. The point is simple: the First Amendment affords Americans a broad, exceedingly broad, latitude in using provocative political rhetoric.
