By Andrew Goudsward
WASHINGTON, April 28 (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department brought criminal charges against James Comey on Tuesday for a second time, accusing the former FBI director of threatening President Donald Trump by posting a photo of shells arranged to show the numbers “86 47.”
The charges, brought in the federal court in the Eastern District of North Carolina, accuse Comey of threatening the life of the U.S. president and transmitting a threat across state lines.
The case relates to an Instagram post Comey published last May while vacationing in North Carolina showing the arrangement of shells. In U.S. parlance, the number 86 can be used as a verb meaning to throw somebody out of a bar, while 47 could be seen as code for Trump, the 47th president.
The indictment marks a renewed push by Trump’s Justice Department to target perceived political enemies of the president with criminal prosecution.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has moved quickly to carry out Trump’s demands for criminal cases after his predecessor, Pam Bondi, was ousted in part for not moving fast enough on them.
Trump and his allies at the time said they interpreted Comey’s post as a threat to violently remove Trump from power.
U.S. officials investigated Comey in the days following the post, but he was not charged.
Comey deleted the message after it attracted controversy.
“I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,” Comey said shortly after posting it.
Comey’s lawyer declined to comment on Tuesday.
Since Blanche took over the top post in April, the Justice Department has brought criminal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center, released a report alleging misconduct in prior prosecutions of anti-abortion activists, and indicted a former National Institutes of Health official for allegedly concealing records related to COVID-19 pandemic research.
Trump has for years railed against Comey over his role overseeing an FBI investigation into alleged ties between Trump’s first presidential campaign and Russian officials in 2016. The DOJ brought a separate case against Comey in September accusing him of lying in congressional testimony about authorizing disclosures to the news media about FBI investigations.
A federal judge dismissed the case after finding that the prosecutor who secured the indictment was not lawfully appointed. The Justice Department is appealing the ruling.
The first case against Comey encountered several legal obstacles. A federal judge found that the lead prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, may have made serious legal errors before the grand jury that approved the indictment. Another judge later blocked the DOJ from using crucial evidence in the case, finding that prosecutors had violated protections against unlawful searches and seizures in the U.S. Constitution.
The latest case is also likely to be challenged on free speech grounds. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution includes robust protections for political statements, even those that may be viewed as offensive.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey and Ryan Patrick Jones; Editing by Michelle Nichols, Chizu Nomiyama and Edmund Klamann)
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