James Comey Surrenders Over '86 47' Image

James Comey's latest appearance in a federal courtroom lasted roughly five minutes but marked a sharp escalation in his long-running clash with President Trump's Justice Department. The former FBI director surrendered Wednesday in Alexandria, Virginia, where he was briefly placed under arrest before a short hearing on charges that he threatened the president and transmitted a threat in interstate commerce. Comey, who did not speak in court and left without any release conditions, has said in a Substack video that he remains "still innocent." CNN reports no plea was entered, and no arraignment date has been set.

The indictment, filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina, hinges on a social media photo Comey posted last May showing seashells arranged as "86 47," with the caption, "Cool shell formation on my beach walk." The term "86" is slang for getting rid of something, and the Justice Department argues those numbers represented a threat against Trump, the 47th president. Comey has said he assumed the numbers reflected a political message, not a call to violence against the president, and removed the post as soon as he saw some people were interpreting it that way. He wrote at the time, "I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence" and "I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down."

The AP reports the indictment is the second against Comey over the past year. The first one, on unrelated false-statement and obstruction charges, was tossed out by a judge last year. Now prosecutors pursuing the threats case face their own challenge of proving that Comey intended to communicate a true threat or at least recklessly discounted the possibility that the statement could be understood as a threat.

The indictment accuses Comey of acting "knowingly and willfully," but its sparse language offers no support for that assertion. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche declined to elaborate at a news conference on what evidence of intent the government has. In the AP's view, broad First Amendment protections for free speech, Supreme Court precedent, and Comey's public statements indicating that he did not intend to convey a threat will likely impose a tall burden for the government.