{"id":423006,"date":"2026-04-29T06:49:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T06:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/423006\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T06:49:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T06:49:08","slug":"former-fbi-director-james-comey-accused-of-threatening-life-of-donald-trump-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/423006\/","title":{"rendered":"Former FBI director James Comey accused of threatening life of Donald Trump \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u200cUS<\/a> justice department brought criminal charges against James Comey<\/a> on Tuesday for a second time, accusing the former FBI<\/a> director of threatening US president Donald Trump<\/a> by posting a \u200bphoto of shells arranged to show the numbers \u201c86 47\u201d.<\/p>\n

The charges, brought in the federal court in the eastern district of North Carolina, accuse Comey of threatening the life of the president and transmitting a threat across state lines. <\/p>\n

The case relates to an Instagram<\/a> post Comey published last May while vacationing in North Carolina showing \u200bthe arrangement of shells. In US parlance, the number 86 can be used as a verb meaning to throw somebody out of a bar, while 47 could be \u2060seen as code for Trump, the 47th president<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The indictment marks a renewed push by Trump\u2019s justice department to target perceived political \u200cenemies \u200cof \u200bthe president with criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n

Acting attorney general Todd Blanche has moved quickly to carry out Trump\u2019s demands for criminal cases after his predecessor, Pam Bondi, was ousted in part for not moving fast enough \u2060on them.<\/p>\n

Trump and his allies at the time said \u200bthey interpreted Comey\u2019s post as a threat to violently remove Trump \u200bfrom power. US officials investigated Comey in the days following the post, but he was not charged. Comey deleted the message after it attracted \u200ccontroversy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t realise some folks associate those numbers \u200bwith violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,\u201d Comey said \u2060shortly after posting it. Comey\u2019s lawyer declined to comment on \u2060Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Since Blanche took over the \u200btop post in April, the justice department has brought criminal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Centre, released a report alleging misconduct in prior prosecutions of anti-abortion activists, and indicted a former National Institutes of Health official for allegedly concealing records related to Covid-19 pandemic research.<\/p>\n

Trump has for years railed against Comey over his role overseeing an FBI investigation into alleged ties between Trump\u2019s first presidential campaign and Russian officials in 2016.<\/p>\n

The department brought a separate case against Comey in September accusing him of lying in congressional testimony about authorising disclosures to the news media about FBI investigations.<\/p>\n

A federal judge dismissed the case \u200cafter finding that the prosecutor who \u2060secured the indictment was not lawfully appointed. The justice department is appealing the ruling. The first case against Comey encountered several legal obstacles.<\/p>\n

A federal judge found that the lead prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan, may have made serious legal errors \u200cbefore the grand jury that approved the indictment. Another judge later blocked the department from using crucial evidence in the case, finding that prosecutors had violated protections against \u200bunlawful searches and seizures in the US constitution<\/p>\n

The latest case is also likely to be \u200bchallenged on free speech grounds. The first amendment to the US constitution includes robust protections for political statements, even those that may be viewed as offensive. \u2013 Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The \u200cUS justice department brought criminal charges against James Comey on Tuesday for a second time, accusing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":423007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[969,285,42,542,32843,43,40,38,41,39,20966,115],"class_list":["post-423006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-fbi","tag-headlines","tag-instagram","tag-james-comey","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trump-presidency","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}