Court Battles

Comey prosecution ‘not just’ about Instagram post: Blanche

Comments:

by Max Rego - 05/03/26 11:56 AM ET

Comments:

Link copied

by Max Rego - 05/03/26 11:56 AM ET

Comments:

Link copied

NOW PLAYING

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday that the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey did not solely result from an Instagram post depicting seashells forming the numbers 86-47.

“Rest assured that the career assistant United States attorneys in North Carolina, the career FBI agents, the career Secret Service agents that investigated this case didn’t just look at the Instagram post and walk away,” Blanche told host Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“That’s why you saw an indictment last week, notwithstanding the fact that it was last May that the post was made,” he added. “So I am not permitted to get into the details of what the grand jury heard or found, as you know. But rest assured that it’s not just the Instagram post that leads somebody to get indicted.”

A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina indicted Comey on Tuesday for allegedly threatening President Trump. The three-page indictment states that by posting the shell formation, Comey “did knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon” the president.

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

“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 in restaurant slang, “86” means to “throw out,” “to get rid of,” or “to refuse service to,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Comey also has repeatedly professed his innocence, saying last May that he did not know that some associated the numbers with violence and vowing earlier this week to fight the charges.

The sole piece of evidence the indictment cites is the Instagram post, which Comey deleted shortly after posting.

Yet throughout his interview with Welker, Blanche referred to other evidence that Justice Department prosecutors, along with the FBI and Secret Service, uncovered during their investigation.

“I’ve said repeatedly this was an investigation that lasted 11 months,” the acting attorney general said. “If the only facts that existed was the posting of the Instagram, obviously that wouldn’t have taken 11 months.”

But Blanche declined to say exactly what that evidence was, saying it will be presented at trial.

Comey appeared Wednesday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., for an administrative hearing. If convicted of threatening the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce, he faces up to 10 years in prison.

“We indict thousands of cases every year,” Blanche noted. “Every one of those cases, there’s an indictment and then eventually there is a trial or some sort of disposition. At the trial, a public trial, that will be open to the public, everybody in this country will know exactly what evidence the government has against Mr. Comey.”

Add as preferred source on Google