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Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted again on Tuesday, this time in an investigation over a social media photo of seashells arranged on a beach that officials said constituted a threat against President Donald Trump, according to a person familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
The criminal case is the second in a matter of months against Comey and is part of the Trump administration Justice Department’s relentless effort to prosecute political opponents of the Republican president. The seashells photo was posted nearly a year ago, but the indictment was secured as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, a Trump loyalist who previously served as his personal lawyer, aims to prove to the president that he’s the right person to hold the job permanently.<\/p>\n
The fact that the Justice Department pursued a new case against the ex-FBI director months after a separate and unrelated indictment was dismissed could open the government to claims of a vindictive prosecution and to arguments that it is going out of its way to target Comey, who had overseen the early months of an investigation into whether the Republican president\u2019s 2016 campaign had coordinated with Russia to sway the outcome of that year\u2019s election. Comey was fired by Trump months into the president\u2019s first term, and they have openly feuded ever since.<\/p>\n
The charges in the latest Comey indictment, confirmed to The Associated Press by a person who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter, were not immediately known. Comey’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment Tuesday, and a Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately comment.<\/p>\n
The prosecution arises from a May post on Instagram in which Comey shared a photo of seashells he saw on a walk in the arrangement of \u201c86 47.\u201d He has said he assumed that the numbers reflected a political message, not a call to violence. Comey deleted the post shortly after it was made, writing: \u201cI didn\u2019t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence\u201d and \u201cI oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, Comey was swiftly interviewed by the Secret Service after Trump administration officials asserted that he was advocating the assassination of Trump, the 47th president.<\/p>\n
Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by the AP, says 86 is slang meaning \u201cto throw out,\u201d \u201cto get rid of\u201d or \u201cto refuse service to.\u201d It notes: \u201cAmong the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of \u2018to kill.\u2019 We do not enter this sense, due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, in a Fox News Channel interview in May, accused Comey of knowing \u201cexactly what that meant.”<\/p>\n
\u201cA child knows what that meant,\u201d Trump said. “If you\u2019re the FBI director and you don\u2019t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.\u201d<\/p>\n
The former FBI director was indicted in September on charges that he lied to and obstructed Congress related to testimony he gave in 2020 about whether he had authorized inside information about an investigation to be provided to a journalist. He denied any wrongdoing, and the case was subsequently dismissed after a judge concluded that the prosecutor who brought the indictment was illegally appointed.<\/p>\n
Comey was the FBI director when Trump took office in 2017, having been appointed by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and serving before that as a senior Justice Department official in President George W. Bush\u2019s Republican administration.<\/p>\n
But the relationship was strained from the start, including after Comey resisted a request by Trump at a private dinner to pledge his personal loyalty to the president — an overture that so unnerved the FBI director that he documented it in a contemporaneous memorandum.<\/p>\n
Trump fired Comey in May 2017 amid an FBI investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump\u2019s presidential campaign. That inquiry, later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, would ultimately find that while Russia interfered in the 2016 election and the Trump team welcomed the help, there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal collaboration.<\/p>\n
Blanche was elevated earlier this month from deputy attorney general to acting attorney general, replacing Pam Bondi, who had frustrated Trump with the department’s struggles to build successful criminal cases against his adversaries. Blanche since then has moved quickly to announce politically charged prosecutions, including a case last week against the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center, which is accused by the Justice Department of defrauding donors by paying donors to infiltrate hate groups. The group has denied any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
Comey is among many Trump foes to face scrutiny over the last year.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department, for instance, is also pursuing a criminal investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, another key figure in the Russia investigation — one of Trump\u2019s chief grievances and a saga that he and his supporters have long sought retaliation for. Brennan has denied doing anything wrong.<\/p>\n
CNN was the first to report the second indictment against Comey.<\/p>\n
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Follow the AP’s coverage of former FBI Director James Comey at\u00a0https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/james-comey.<\/em><\/p>\n This story was originally featured on Fortune.com<\/p>\n #Justice #Department #prosecuting #James #Comey #time #Instagram #post #seashells<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted again on Tuesday, this time in an investigation over a social media photo of seashells arranged on a beach that officials said constituted a threat against… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[705,702,706,704,701,693,703,707,14],"class_list":["post-675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-comey","tag-department","tag-instagram","tag-james","tag-justice","tag-post","tag-prosecuting","tag-seashells","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}