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Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted on Tuesday in an investigation over\u00a0a social media photo\u00a0of seashells arranged on a beach that officials said constituted a threat against President Donald Trump, according to a person familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
The person was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and confirmed the indictment to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. The charge or charges against Comey were not immediately known.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the second\u00a0criminal case\u00a0the Justice Department has brought against the longtime Trump foe, who said he assumed the arrangement of shells he saw on a walk, reading \u201c86 47,\u201d was a political message, not a call to violence. Comey is among multiple foes of the Republican president to come under scrutiny by the Justice Department over the last year, including as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche aims to position himself as the right person to hold the job permanently.<\/p>\n
Comey was\u00a0interviewed by the Secret Service\u00a0in May after Trump administration officials asserted that he was advocating the assassination of Trump, the 47th president. Comey deleted the post shortly after it was made, writing: \u201cI didn\u2019t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence\u201d and \u201cI oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.\u201d<\/p>\n
His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by The Associated Press, says\u00a086 is slang\u00a0meaning \u201cto throw out,\u201d \u201cto get rid of\u201d or \u201cto refuse service to.\u201d It notes: \u201cAmong the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of \u2018to kill.\u2019 We do not enter this sense, due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, in a Fox News Channel interview in May, accused Comey of knowing \u201cexactly what that meant.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA child knows what that meant,\u201d Trump said. \u201cIf you\u2019re the FBI director and you don\u2019t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fact that the Justice Department pursued a new case against the ex-FBI director months after a separate and unrelated indictment was dismissed will likely spark defense claims that the Trump administration is going out of its way to target Comey, who had overseen the early months of an investigation into whether the Republican president\u2019s 2016 campaign had coordinated with Russia to sway the outcome of that year\u2019s election.<\/p>\n
The former FBI director was indicted in September on charges that he lied to and obstructed Congress related to testimony he gave in 2020 about whether he had authorized inside information about an investigation to be provided to a journalist. He denied any wrongdoing, and the case was subsequently dismissed after\u00a0a judge concluded that the prosecutor who brought the indictment\u00a0was illegally appointed.<\/p>\n
Comey was the FBI director when Trump took office in 2017, having been appointed by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and serving before that as a senior Justice Department official in President George W. Bush\u2019s Republican administration.<\/p>\n
But the relationship was strained from the start, including after Comey resisted a request by Trump at a private dinner to pledge his personal loyalty to the president \u2014 an overture that so unnerved the FBI director that he documented it in a contemporaneous memorandum.<\/p>\n
Trump fired Comey in May 2017\u00a0amid an FBI investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump\u2019s presidential campaign. That inquiry, later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, would ultimately find that while Russia interfered in the 2016 election and the Trump team welcomed the help, there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal collaboration.<\/p>\n
The department, for instance, is also pursuing a criminal investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, another key figure in the Russia investigation \u2014 one of Trump\u2019s chief grievances and a saga that he and his supporters have long sought retaliation for.<\/p>\n
CNN was the first to report the second indictment against Comey.<\/p>\n
#James #Comey #indicted #posting #allegedly #threatening #photo #seashells #social #media #source<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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