Trump's Justice Department wants a jury to decide if James Comey threatened the president with seashells.
Yes, you read that correctly. The former FBI director is facing criminal charges over a beach photo he snapped and posted online, and prosecutors are absolutely refusing to let him wiggle out of it before trial. Federal attorneys in North Carolina's Eastern District fired back at Comey's attempt to get the whole indictment tossed, as reported on Wednesday.
So what's this all about? Comey photographed seashells on a North Carolina beach that were arranged to spell out "86 47." Prosecutors say that combination can reasonably be read as a call to kill the 47th president, Donald Trump, since "86" carries a well-known slang meaning tied to elimination or death in certain contexts.
Comey's lawyers are calling the whole thing absurd. They argue "86" simply means "get rid of" or "eject" and that pairing it with "47" amounts to nothing more than political opposition. They wrote that no reasonable observer would interpret the phrase as a personal pledge of violence from their client. They also labeled the prosecution vindictive and politically motivated.
But here's where it gets really juicy. Prosecutors revealed that Comey actually deleted the post himself. Even more damaging, he apparently acknowledged in writing that some people could interpret his message as conveying a violent meaning depending on the circumstances. That's a pretty rough admission when you're simultaneously arguing nobody could possibly see it as threatening.
The DOJ pounced on that point hard. They wrote that it would be "exceedingly odd" for a judge to throw out the indictment when even the defendant concedes the post could be understood as violent, all before prosecutors have had any chance to present their evidence in context.
Prosecutors also made clear they have no obligation to lay out every piece of evidence inside the indictment itself. Additional material will come out when the case goes to trial in October, they said.
This is actually round two between Trump's DOJ and his longtime political nemesis. Comey ran the FBI during the Russia collusion investigation that many conservatives have long considered a politically driven effort to sabotage Trump's first term. So there's clearly no love lost between these two.
The government's filing also apparently included a text message from one of Comey's own relatives accusing him and his wife of having "TDS," which is quite the family dinner conversation starter.
Comey's legal team maintains that dictionaries, precedent, context, and basic common sense all undercut the prosecution's theory. They pointed out that most dictionaries don't even list "to kill" as a definition of "86."
Prosecutors aren't budging one inch though. They wrote bluntly that there is "no serious dispute" that an objective viewer could read the post as meaning "Kill President Trump."
October's trial is shaping up to be one of the most bizarre courtroom showdowns in recent political history. A former FBI director, seashells on a beach, and the question of whether arranging them in a certain pattern constitutes a presidential death threat. Only in America.
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