Senate

Prosecution of Comey ‘makes no sense:’ Tillis

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by Max Rego - 05/03/26 10:39 AM ET

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by Max Rego - 05/03/26 10:39 AM ET

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Republican Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.) on Sunday expressed reservations about the prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey.

“If this whole case is based on a picture in the sand of a North Carolina beach, it again makes no sense to me,” Tillis told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Comey, who served as FBI director from 2013 until President Trump fired him in 2017, was indicted by a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina on Tuesday for allegedly threatening Trump.

In the indictment, the lone piece of evidence cited is a photo that Comey posted to Instagram last May of seashells forming the numbers 86-47. At the time, the former FBI director wrote, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

The president argued earlier this week that the post was intended to threaten him, the 47th president.

“If anybody knows anything about crime, they know ‘86.’ You know what ‘86’ [is]? It’s a mob term for ‘kill ‘em,’” Trump told reporters Wednesday in the Oval Office.

But Tillis, noting that he once worked in the restaurant industry, said Sunday that the phrase ‘86’ has its origins in that realm.

In restaurant slang, “86” means to “to throw out,” “to get rid of,” or “to refuse service to,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. It comes from 1930s soda-counter slang indicating that an item was sold out, the dictionary notes.

“I can’t find any evidence, except some that’s come up after the president made the comment about the movies. … I can’t find any evidence where ‘86’ is used as a call for violence,” the North Carolina Republican added.

Last May, Comey wrote on Instagram that while he assumed” the shells were arranged in a “political message,” he “didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.”

The former FBI director added, “It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

On Tuesday, Comey again professed his innocence and vowed to fight the indictment.

“I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary, so let’s go,” he said in a video posted to Substack.

Tillis said Sunday that his prior defense of Comey amid the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was the “biggest disappointment of my Senate career” and the former FBI director was a “political hack” during his tenure.

“That alone, though, would not allow me [to] support what I think, on its face, is some sort of a vindictive prosecution,” Tillis noted.

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