Acting attorney general claims Comey ‘threatened the life of the president’ in announcing charges At a news conference on Tuesday, Todd Blanche, the former defense lawyer for Donald Trump now serving as acting US attorney general, just announced the filing of two charges against James Comey, the former FBI director and deputy attorney general for allegedly “knowing and willfully making a threat to kill” the president of the United States in a social media post.
The two-page indictment filed in North Carolina claimed Comey “did knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States, in that he publicly posted a photograph on the internet social media site Instagram which depicted seashells arranged in a pattern making out ‘86 47’ which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States.”
The number 86 can be used as shorthand for getting rid of something, and Trump is the 47th president. Comey subsequently deleted the post and apologized, saying he didn’t realize the numbers were associated with violence. “It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,” he wrote on Instagram.
Blanche noted that an arrest warrant had been issued but did not know if Comey had been arrested yet.