James Comey surrenders to authorities after indictment over seashell post

James Comey made a brief appearance in court on Wednesday after the justice department indicted him over a social media post in a renewed bid to prosecute one of Donald Trump’s longtime political adversaries.

The former FBI director was indicted in North Carolina on Tuesday over a photograph he posted last year of seashells arranged in the numbers “86 47” – a message the justice department says amounts to a threat against Trump, the 47th US president.

The indictment, made public on Tuesday, said a reasonable person “would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States”.

Comey responded in a video of himself speaking to the camera on his personal Substack the same day to declare: “I am still innocent.”

“Well, they’re back,” Comey said in the Tuesday video. “This time, about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. And this won’t be the end of it, but nothing has changed with me. I am still innocent. I am still not afraid. And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary. So, let’s go.”

Comey has said he assumed the numbers reflected a political message, not a call to violence against the Republican president, and removed the post as soon as he saw some people were interpreting it that way. “It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,” he wrote in a subsequent post on Instagram.

The indictment is the second the justice department has brought against Comey. The department indicted Comey last year and charged him with lying to Congress. But that case was tossed out by a judge in the eastern district of Virginia, who ruled that the prosecutor overseeing the case had been wrongfully appointed.

Comey has long been the subject of Trump’s wrath, stretching back to the president’s first term, when he led the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia. Trump dismissed Comey as FBI director in 2017, just four years into his 10-year term.

Ever since, Trump allies had called for the former FBI director to be punished. In September, Trump wrote in a social media post directed to his then attorney general Pam Bondi, lamenting the lack of indictments against Comey and New York attorney general, Letitia James. The justice department last year also criminally charged the New York attorney general on thin allegations of mortgage fraud. It was dismissed on the same basis as the case against Comey.

The new indictment marks the latest instance in which Trump’s justice department has used its power to target the US president’s political enemies.

Trump fired Bondi earlier this month, in part because he believed she had not moved aggressively enough to prosecute his rivals. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general who is said to want the job permanently, quickly renewed the effort to go after Comey and acceleratedan inquiry into John Brennan, the former CIA director whom Trump frequently targets.

But legal experts say prosecutors may have a hard time bringing the case against Comey for the post widely seen as a non-violent anti-Trump expression. In the immediate aftermath, federal law enforcement officials investigated the matter and interviewed Comey.

The Guardian wp:paragraph