For months, legal circles have been abuzz with rumors that the Justice Department, undeterred by the dismissal of its first case against former FBI Director James Comey and its inability to secure a second indictment on the same allegations, would indict Comey again for other reasons.
On Tuesday, those rumors became reality when the DOJ indicted Comey in the Eastern District of North Carolina because of his May 2025 social media post of a picture of seashells arranged to read “86 47.” For that, the DOJ has indicted Comey for threatening the life of a president and further, for making a threat to injure another person — also the president — via “interstate communications.” Each count is punishable by a sizable fine, no more than five years in prison or both.
While some interpreted that the “86” meant to eliminate or kill, others maintained it simply meant to remove or cancel. Comey has claimed he viewed the shells that he came upon during a beach walk as a “political message,” and that he opposes violence of any kind.
Despite Trump’s longstanding fixation on Comey, which the former FBI director proved to a federal court through a nearly 60-page chart documenting Trump’s social media posts about him, the newest efforts to punish Comey should not be viewed in isolation.
Consider other DOJ developments within the last 24 hours:
- Late Monday night, in a filing that read like a Trump-written social media screed, not a legal argument, the DOJ demanded that the federal judge overseeing the White House ballroom case reverse a ruling blocking above-ground construction on the ballroom. The DOJ filing was both curious and unnecessary because a federal appeals court has stayed that ruling for at least several weeks, meaning construction can resume as the appeal continues. Nonetheless, the DOJ filing — rife with capitalized words, exclamation points, political epithets and unsupported factual assertions — not only suggested Trump cannot continue construction, but framed the ballroom project as “vital to our National Security, and the Safety of all Presidents of the United States, both current and future, their families, staff, and cabinet members.”
- Then, early Tuesday, multiple media outlets reported that the FBI and the DOJ executed search warrants on 20-plus businesses in Minneapolis as part of a wide-reaching federal fraud investigation into the use of federal social services funds. Trump himself has not only commented on that investigation, a departure from usual presidential protocol, but he has also publicly accused several of the state’s top Democratic officials — Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and Rep. Ilhan Omar — all of whom have been his political foils, if not his electoral opponents, of being “complicit” in that fraud.
- Later, in Maryland federal court, the DOJ indicted a former senior aide to the former National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases head, Dr. Anthony Fauci. There, the government alleged not only that David M. Morens destroyed and/or evaded creating government records by using personal emails, but also that he conspired with Chinese researchers to counter the emerging thesis that Covid-19 was unleashed through a lab leak, thereby limiting the information available to decision-makers, including Trump. In a press release announcing the charges, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche alleged that the aide “deliberately concealed information and falsified records in an effort to suppress alternative theories regarding the origins of COVID-19” before giving a hint about what has really undergirded the case: His belief that NIH officials were obligated to “provide honest, well-ground facts and advice,” not “advance their own personal or ideological agendas.”
And finally, on Tuesday afternoon, the DOJ unsealed the bare-bones, three-page Comey indictment.
Collectively, these developments highlight that there is a new sheriff in town. And indeed,Blanche, who appears to be publicly auditioning to become Trump’s permanent attorney general, has advanced investigations and cases against the president’s enemies and detractors as rapidly as he has aggressively.
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In particular, the federal statute that criminalizes threats against the president is not a judicially blank slate; rather, it was interpreted by the Supreme Court in 1969, when it reversed the conviction of an antiwar protester who said if he were forced to carry a rifle as an enlisted man, “the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.”
There, the court noted that to sustain a conviction under that statute, the DOJ has to prove “a true ‘threat,”’ as distinguished from the “vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials” that are sometimes part of our political discourse. To the court, the protester’s statements were not a real threat, but a “crude [and] offensive method of stating a political opposition to the President.”
Against that backdrop, the new indictment against Comey hardly seems to be a slam dunk for the DOJ — or Blanche.
But if the process itself is the punishment, and the thing the man Blanche has described as the DOJ’s “boss” craves, Blanche achieved multiple wins — and not just a new Comey indictment — on a random Tuesday in April.
And days like this might be enough to keep him at the attorney general’s desk.
Lisa Rubin is MS NOW's senior legal reporter and a former litigator.