James Comey to face Trump threat indictment in court

Former FBI Director James Comey is expected to appear in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday to face a two-count indictment accusing him of threatening to kill President Donald Trump by posting on Instagram a photo of seashells arranged to form the message “86 47” on a North Carolina beach last May.

“I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid, and I still believe in an independent federal judiciary, so let’s go,” Comey said Tuesday after the second indictment against him was unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, where the case will be heard.

Comey will appear in Alexandria for the first hearing in the case because it is the federal court closest to his home.

Trump and the Department of Justice claimed that the numbers “86 47” constituted an assassination threat against Trump.

According to dictionaries, “86” is a slang word for removing or removing a person, and Trump is the 47th president of the United States.

Comey said he took a photo of the bullets after seeing them on the beach while vacationing in North Carolina last May and assumed it was a “political message.”

“I didn’t realize some people were associating these numbers with violence,” Comey said following the backlash that emerged shortly after he published the photo. “This never occurred to me but I am against all forms of violence so I removed the post.”

Comey removed the photo a day after posting it.

FBI Director Kash Patel announced the charges against Comey at a news conference Tuesday, saying the FBI has been investigating the case for the past “nine, 10, 11 months.”

But the three-page indictment against Comey appears to be sparse in detail about any evidence the FBI might find against him, other than a photograph of the bullets and the claim that Comey intended to convey the threat Trump intended with the arrangement.

The indictment states that Comey “knowingly and willfully transmitted, in interstate and foreign commerce, a communication threatening to kill President Donald J. Trump in public on the online social media site Instagram, along with a photo showing seashells arranged in the shape of ’86 47′. A reasonable recipient, knowing the circumstances, would interpret this as a serious expression of intent to harm President Trump.”

Comey is accused of threatening the president and disseminating threats in interstate commerce.

The federal magistrate judge expected to handle Wednesday’s hearing is William Fitzpatrick, who coincidentally is the same magistrate judge who handled the initial indictment against Comey by the Eastern District of Virginia Department of Justice in September.

Comey was accused of lying in this case. Senate Judiciary Committee In 2020, he denied allowing someone else from the FBI to be an anonymous source in news stories about an investigation into Hillary Clinton and her emails while she was the Democratic presidential candidate in 2016.

This indictment was seen by critics of Trump and the Justice Department’s current leadership as retaliation for Comey’s role at the FBI in an investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign and contacts with Russians.

The initial indictment was dismissed in November after another federal judge found that then-interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, who received the indictment, was not validly appointed by Trump.