Trump administration secures new indictment against Comey

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department has secured a new indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, over a social media post, after a past indictment effort spurred by President Donald Trump last year ended in failure, according to people familiar with the investigation.

The new case represents another twist in the department’s tortured efforts to satisfy the demands of Trump to pursue criminal charges against Comey, a longtime target of the president’s wrath. The first indictment against Comey was thrown out by a judge.

The charge stems from an incident nearly a year ago, when Comey, vacationing on the North Carolina coast, posted a photograph on social media showing seashells arranged to say “86 47,” combining the slang term “86” often used to mean dismiss or remove in reference to Trump, the country’s 47th president.

Members of the administration, as well as Trump’s family, declared that the meaning of “86” was to kill, and that the seashell message amounted to a threat to assassinate the president.

After the image was posted, the Secret Service went so far as to track the location of Comey and his wife as they traveled from their vacation spot to their home in Northern Virginia.

When Comey learned of the uproar, he deleted the post, saying that he did not know that it had a violent connotation and that he opposed violence of any kind. The Secret Service interviewed him by phone that evening, and Comey said he had no intent to cause the president harm. The next day, he sat for an in-person interview. The Justice Department eventually dropped the matter, but it was revived in recent months.

Comey was indicted in September by a grand jury in Virginia, accused of lying and obstructing a congressional investigation over testimony he gave in 2020. That indictment came after Trump fired the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia after he and career prosecutors in the office had determined the evidence did not support criminal charges against Comey.

The president replaced that prosecutor with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide with no previous prosecutorial experience. Halligan quickly secured a grand jury indictment against Comey, and then another in an unrelated case against New York Attorney General Letitia James, another longtime target of Trump.

Both indictments were dismissed in November, after a judge ruled that the Trump administration’s appointment of Halligan did not follow federal law for such positions.

Even though a judge ruled that certain evidence in the Comey case was off-limits to prosecutors, the Trump administration has signaled its intent to continue its pursuit of Comey.

The new effort to charge Comey comes less than a month after the president fired his attorney general, Pam Bondi, over frustration with what advisers said was her handling of files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the department’s effectiveness in cases against his perceived enemies.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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