Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche went on national television Wednesday and delivered an unequivocal denial: President Trump did not direct the Justice Department to pursue the latest charges against former FBI Director James Comey. A grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina had indicted Comey just one day earlier, alleging that an Instagram post arranging seashells to spell "86 47" constituted a threat to assassinate the president.
"Of course not, absolutely, positively not," Blanche told CBS News' Major Garrett on "CBS Mornings" when asked whether Trump had ordered the prosecution. He pointed to the nearly year-long investigation that preceded the indictment and to the grand jury's independent decision to return charges.
The indictment marks the second time the Justice Department has attempted to prosecute Comey, and it lands on a former FBI director whose tenure atop the bureau remains one of the most politically contentious chapters in recent law enforcement history. For critics who spent years watching Comey operate as a self-appointed moral authority while making decisions that shaped presidential elections, the question is not whether the case is political. The question is whether Comey is finally being held to the same rules as everyone else.
The grand jury's indictment centers on a single Instagram post. Comey shared an image showing the numbers "86 47" arranged in seashells. The phrase "86" is widely understood as slang for getting rid of something, or someone. "47" is the number of the current presidency. The indictment alleges that a "reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances" would interpret the post "as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to President Trump."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Petracca signed the indictment. The case has been assigned to Judge Louise Wood Flanagan. An arrest warrant for Comey was issued.
Comey posted the image in May 2025. After receiving backlash online, he quickly deleted it and offered an explanation. He said he "didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence." On Tuesday, the same day the indictment dropped, Comey posted a video statement proclaiming his innocence.
That explanation, that a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not understand the meaning of "86" paired with the number of the sitting president, strains credulity. Comey spent decades in federal law enforcement. He led the nation's premier investigative agency. The notion that he was innocently arranging seashells without grasping the implication asks the public to believe a career prosecutor and intelligence official was less informed than the average social media user who flagged the post immediately.
Blanche was direct in dismissing attempts to minimize the case. He urged skeptics to read the charging document themselves, saying simply, "look at the indictment." Then he sharpened the point, as he told Garrett on CBS:
"If anybody in this country thinks, especially given what happened over the past couple of years with respect to President Trump, that it is okay for anybody to threaten the president of the United States... and then have the media or others say, well that's not serious, then we have a bigger problem than I even imagined in this country."
He went further, targeting the framing head-on:
"Anybody who tries to put forward some narrative that this is just about seashells or something to the contrary is missing the point. You cannot threaten the president of the United States."
That framing matters. The instinct among Comey's defenders will be to cast this as a politically motivated prosecution, Trump settling scores with the man who investigated him. Blanche's denial was categorical. And the mechanism he described, a year-long investigation culminating in a grand jury's independent decision, follows the standard process for federal criminal cases, not the hallmarks of a White House directive.
Garrett pressed Blanche on whether conservative figures who had posted similar images about former President Joe Biden should face the same scrutiny. Blanche did not dodge the premise but declined to draw a blanket equivalence.
"Every investigation is different," he said. "Everyday there's comments made about President Trump, threats made against President Trump, every one of those are not indicted." He added: "It depends on the facts of the case."
That answer is worth sitting with. The acting attorney general did not claim that every provocative social media post warrants prosecution. He drew a distinction based on the specific facts, the identity of the poster, the context, the language, and the grand jury's assessment of whether a reasonable person would perceive a genuine threat. Comey is not a random internet troll. He is a former FBI director with extensive knowledge of how threats are assessed, investigated, and prosecuted. The grand jury apparently concluded that his post crossed a line.
This is not the first time the Justice Department has brought charges against Comey. A grand jury indicted him in September on charges of making false statements and obstruction of justice, related to Senate testimony he gave almost five years earlier. That case fell apart in November when a federal judge threw out the charges, ruling that Lindsey Halligan, the top prosecutor in eastern Virginia who had secured the indictment, had been unlawfully appointed to her position.
The collapse of that first case gave Comey's allies ammunition. They pointed to it as evidence that the government's pursuit of the former FBI director was legally shoddy and politically driven. But the dismissal turned on an appointment question, not on the merits of the underlying allegations. And the new indictment comes from a different district, a different prosecutor, and a different set of facts entirely.
The Eastern District of North Carolina case stands on its own. It does not depend on the earlier prosecution's validity or on Halligan's appointment status. It rests on the grand jury's conclusion that Comey's Instagram post constituted a threat against the president.
Comey has proclaimed his innocence via video. His public posture since May 2025 has been that the post was a political message, not a threat. He will presumably mount a First Amendment defense, arguing that the seashell image was protected political speech, however tasteless.
That defense will face a specific legal test: whether the post constitutes a "true threat" under federal law, a category of speech the First Amendment does not protect. The indictment's language, citing a "reasonable recipient" standard, signals that prosecutors believe they can meet that burden.
Several open questions remain. The specific federal statute under which Comey was charged is not yet publicly detailed. The case number and precise charges beyond the threat allegation have not been reported. And the timeline for Comey's arrest, arraignment, and initial court appearance remains unclear, though the warrant has been issued.
James Comey spent years positioning himself as the conscience of federal law enforcement, the man too principled for politics, too upright for partisanship. He wrote books about ethical leadership. He gave speeches about the rule of law. He cultivated an image as the adult in every room he entered.
But his conduct since leaving office has told a different story. The Instagram post was not the act of a man above the fray. It was, at minimum, reckless, and at worst, exactly what the grand jury says it was. A former FBI director knows how threat assessments work. He knows what language triggers federal scrutiny. He knows what "86" means.
Blanche's statement that this investigation ran for nearly a year before the grand jury acted undercuts the narrative that the indictment was a rushed political hit job. Grand juries hear evidence, weigh testimony, and make independent charging decisions. This one decided that Comey's post warranted prosecution.
The same people who spent four years insisting that no one is above the law will now have to decide whether they meant it, or whether that principle only applies when the target is someone they oppose.
