At a press conference to announce the indictment, FBI Director Kash Patel said that as the former director of the agency, Comey “knew full well the attention and consequences of making such a post”.<\/p>\n
“James Comey disgracefully encouraged a threat on President Trump’s life and posted it on Instagram for the world to see,” Kash Patel said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Comey was fired by Trump during his first term, after the former FBI director opened an investigation into Russian interference in the US 2016 presidential election. <\/p>\n
Since then, Trump has repeatedly called for his prosecution – Tuesday’s charges are the administration’s second attempt to do so.<\/p>\n
“Well, they’re back. This time about a picture of sea shells on a North Carolina beach a year ago. And this won’t be the end of it, but nothing has changed with me,” Comey said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Comey faces charges of making a threat against the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce, according to court documents. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.<\/p>\n
“Threatening the life of the President of the United States is a grave violation of our nation’s laws,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement. “The grand jury returned an indictment alleging James Comey did just that.”<\/p>\n
US Secret Service agents interviewed Comey last May about the seashell photo.<\/p>\n
Comey deleted the Instagram post, saying in a follow-up that he “assumed [the sea shells] were a political message”.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t realise some folks associate those numbers with violence,” he added. “It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”<\/p>\n
Trump, who has long criticised Comey, said of the post that “a child knows what that meant”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At a press conference to announce the indictment, FBI Director Kash Patel said that as the former director…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-555931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}