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.
Key events
Schiff says Blanche brought ‘frivolous’ charges against Comey to get appointed attorney general by Trump
In a video response to the indictment of James Comey, senator Adam Schiff, a former prosecutor who led the first impeachment of Donald Trump, accused Todd Blanche of bringing charges as part of an effort to get the job of attorney general on a permanent basis.
Blanche announced criminal charges against Comey, Schiff said, “because of seashells on the beach which he posted an image of that said, ‘86 47’, 86 being slang for getting rid of something and 47 being the number of the 47th president, Donald Trump.”
“It is an absurdity to charge someone for this,” Schiff added.
Schiff predicted that this second effort to convict Comey of a crime “will also fail, but this has, I guess, the merit, from the White House point of view of just putting James Comey through the wringer, and from Todd Blanche’s point of view, helping burnish his record of frivolous cases against the president’s enemies in order to secure the top job for himself.”
Comey expresses faith that he will be exonerated at trial over social media post: ‘So, let’s go.’
In a video statement posted on Substack, James Comey, the former FBI director and deputy attorney general, responded to new criminal charges alleging that his social media post last year, with seashells arranged in an “86 47” pattern on a beach constituted an illegal threat to the life of Donald Trump.
In a post headlined “Seashells”, Comey said:
Well, they’re back. This time, about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. And this won’t be the end of it, but nothing has changed with me. I am still innocent. I am still not afraid. And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary – so, let’s go. But it’s really important that all of us remember: this is not who we are as a country, this is not how the department of justice is supposed to be, and the good news is we get closer every day to restoring those values. Keep the faith.
Daily Wire reporter reminds attorney general Gretchen Whitmer displayed ’86 45′ image in 2020
At the end of the Department of Justice news conference to announce the filing of criminal charges against the former FBI director, James Comey, for posting an Instagram image of seashells arranged on the beach in an “86 47” pattern, taken as a threat to the life of the 47th president, Donald Trump, a reporter for a rightwing, pro-Trump outlet asked if similar charges might now follow for another critic of the president, Gretchen Whitmer.
Mary Margaret Olohan, a Daily Wire correspondent, asked Todd Blanche, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer now serving as acting attorney general, if, according to the logic of the indictment against Comey, similar charges might soon be filed against Whitmer, the Michigan governor, over a small “86 45” pin seen on a table behind her during a 2020 TV interview with NBC news.
The interview with Whitmer was conducted weeks before the 2020 election and the Trump campaign claimed that the small pin, used by opponents of Trump to signal that they were in favor of voting him out of office, somehow meant that the governor was “encouraging assassination attempts against President Trump”, who was at that time the 45th president.
As Michigan Public Radio explained at the time, anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant has “most likely heard the term ‘86’ yelled at you from the kitchen. In the restaurant industry, the term is used to refer to dishes that are no longer available on the menu.”
As critics of the logic under which Comey was indicted have pointed out, if posting that slogan is a criminal threat to the life of the president, then the justice department should soon also be filing charges against Jack Posobiec, the rightwing Turning Point USA operative and podcaster who posted “86 46” on Twitter in early 2022, when Joe Biden was the 46th president.
In the news conference, Blanche refused to be drawn on the question of charges against Whitmer, but he also pointed out, in response to another question, that “the statute of limitations on this is five years”, which would seem to rule out charges against Whitmer, but not against Posobiec.
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.
King Charles got bipartisan ovation from Congress for noting ‘executive power is subject to checks and balances’
At one stage during his just completed address to a joint session of Congress, King Charles seemed to be surprised when one line was interrupted by applause, and a bipartisan standing ovation.
The moment, which was quickly highlighted on social media by Democrats, came as the five-times great grandson of King George III noted that “the US Supreme Court Historical Society has calculated that Magna Carta is cited in at least 160 Supreme Court cases since 1789, not least as the foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.”
A social media feed originally set up to boost the candidacy of Kamala Harris in 2024 shared the video with the barbed comment: “A literal king is showing more commitment to checks and balances than the US president”.
As the king spoke, the official White House accounts on Facebook, Instagram and X all posted an image of Donald Trump laughing with Charles earlier in the day with the caption: “TWO KINGS”.
The trolling posts come days after the president embraced a Fox News producer’s theory that the gunman who allegedly tried to kill him on Saturday had been radicalized by the anti-Trump No Kings movement.
The day so far
King Charles addressed a joint session of Congress, where he made an appeal for multilateralism and joint action on climate change at a moment when Washington under the Trump presidency has retreated from both. But the king’s speech seemed to be relatively well-received, peppered with quips about royal tradition and American independence from the British crown. He hailed the US-UK bond as ‘unbreakable’ while acknowledging “differences and disagreements”. He warned of the threats facing democracies around the world and observed before the chamber filled with administration officials and legislative leaders, that “America’s words carry weight and meaning, as they have since Independence”.
Meanwhile, James Comey has been indicted a second time by Donald Trump’s justice department, months after a federal judge dismissed its initial case against the former FBI director, a source familiar confirmed to the Guardian’s Sam Levine.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to order early reviews of eight Disney-owned ABC stations as soon as Tuesday in a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s fight with major media outlets, a source told Reuters. This comes after Jimmy Kimmel refused to apologize for a joke made days before the White House correspondents’ dinner shooting in which he described Melania Trump as glowing “like an expectant widow”. Since the dinner, both Trump and the first lady accused him of inciting violence.
Applicants seeking a temporary visa to the United States must now tell a consular officer that they have not experienced harm and do not fear returning to their home country, according to new guidance issued from the state department. If they answer yes or decline to respond to either question, the chance they will be denied will skyrocket.
Before the king’s speech, congressman Ro Khanna held a rountable with the survivors and family members of Jeffry Epstein’s abuse. The California Democrat said Charles had declined his invitation to meet with some of the survivors.
Charles ended with an appeal to the countries’ shared history, which he described as a “story of reconciliation, renewal and remarkable partnership”.
From “bitter divisions” to a defining alliance that is “one of the most consequential alliances in human history,” Charles said the arc was long but hardly guaranteed. He urged the leaders –and the people – of the UK and the US to resist isolationism.
“I pray with all my heart that our Alliance will continue to defend our shared values, with our partners in Europe and the Commonwealth, and across the world, and that we ignore the clarion calls to become ever more inward-looking,” he said.
“America’s words carry weight and meaning, as they have since Independence,” the king observed, drawing oohs and murmurs of agreement from the audience.
He then quoted Abraham Lincoln, leaving Congress with the 16th US president’s reflection that “the world may little note what we say, but will never forget what we do”.
“And so, to the United States of America, on your 250th birthday,” the king said, concluding his roughly 28-minute speech, “let our two countries rededicate ourselves to each other in the selfless service of our peoples and of all the peoples of the world.”
Charles is now pulling back the lens, warning of “the collapse of critical natural systems”.
“We ignore at our peril the fact that these natural systems – in other words, nature’s own economy – provide the foundation for our prosperity and our national security,” Charles, widely recognized as a pioneering, long-term environmental advocate, said.
In an emotional appeal to the American legislative body, he referenced the aftermath of 9/11, when the Nato alliance invoked Article five. “We answered the call together – as our people have done so for more than a century, shoulder to shoulder, through two World Wars, the Cold War, Afghanistan and moments that have defined our shared security.”
The same “unyielding resolve,” he argued, is now required to “secure a truly just and lasting peace” in Ukraine and to combat the “disastrously melting ice-caps of the Arctic”.
“The commitment and expertise of the United States Armed Forces and its allies lie at the heart of Nato, pledged to each other’s defense, protecting our citizens and interests, keeping North Americans an Europeans safe from our common adversaries,” he said.
The US-UK alliance, Charles argued, is not just strategic – it’s built on 250 years of shared principles. Calling it “truly unique,” he invoked a vision of transatlantic partnership that remains “more important today than it has ever been.”
Now, the king said, was “an era that is, in many ways, more volatile and more dangerous than the world to which my late Mother spoke, in this chamber, in 1991”.
“The challenges we face are too great for any one nation to bear alone,” he said. “But in this unpredictable environment, our alliance cannot rest on past achievements, or assume that foundational principles simply endure.”
He quoted prime minister Keir Starmer, who called the US-UK partnership “indispensable”.
“We must not disregard everything that has sustained us for the last eighty years. Instead, we must build on it,” he quoted Starmer.
Charles is charming the members of Congress, who keep laughing at the monarch’s self-deprecating humor.
Marking his first visit to Washington as King and Head of the Commonwealth, he said DC is a place that symbolizes what Charles Dickens might have called “A Tale of Two Georges”.
“My five-times Great Grandfather, King George III. King George never set foot in America and, please rest assured, I am not here as part of some cunning rearguard action,” the King quipped, drawing laughter in the chamber.
“The Founding Fathers were bold and imaginative rebels with a cause,” he continued. “250 years ago … or, as we say in the United Kingdom, just the other day…. they declared Independence.”
It drew more laughter, applause and whoops from the audience.
King Charles hails US-UK bond as ‘unbreakable’ while acknowledging ‘differences and disagreements’
Charles acknowledged “our differences” and “disagreements” but emphasized the countries’ shared “commitment to uphold democracy, to protect all our people from harm, and to salute the courage of those who daily risk their lives in the service of our countries”.
“Ours is a partnership born out of dispute, but no less strong for it… So perhaps, in this example, we can discern that our Nations are in fact instinctively like-minded – a product of the common democratic, legal and social traditions in which our governance is rooted to this day,” the King said.
He quoted Trump calling the US-UK bond “irreplaceable and unbreakable”.
Charles drew laughs when he imparted a bit of ceremonial British tradition during such addresses to parliament.
“As you may know, when I address my own parliament at Westminster, we still follow an age-old tradition and take a member of Parliament ‘hostage’, holding him or her at Buckingham Palace until I am safely returned,” he said. “These days, we look after our ‘guest’ rather well – to the point that they often do not want to leave! I don’t know, Mr Speaker, if there were any volunteers for that role here today…?”
Charles then made reference to the war in the Middle East and acknowledge the recent assassination attempt against Trump at a Washington media dinner on Saturday night.
“We meet in times of great uncertainty; in times of conflict from Europe to the Middle East which pose immense challenges for the international community and whose impact is felt in communities the length and breadth of our own countries,” he said.
“We meet, too, in the aftermath of the incident not far from this great building that sought to harm the leadership of your Nation and to foment wider fear and discord. Let me say with unshakeable resolve: such acts of violence will never succeed.”
