The New York City Bar Association said Thursday it was “deeply troubled” by the Trump administration’s renewed effort to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey through a Monday indictment over a 2025 social media post of seashells, saying the case lacked substance and was clearly “politically inspired retaliation.”
This is the second time President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has indicted Comey on charges widely considered to be weak and politically motivated. The indictments come after Trump fired Comey in 2017 when the former FBI director was leading the agency’s investigation into Russia’s potential collusion with the president’s campaign in the 2016 election.
“Weaponization of the Justice Department to exact retribution against the President’s perceived political foes reflects a profound betrayal of the American principle of prosecutorial independence and an alarming departure from the rule of law,” the City Bar said in a statement.
Monday’s indictment, filed in North Carolina federal court, charges Comey with threatening violence against the president for posting a photo of seashells he found on a beach arranged to depict the numbers “86 47” with the caption ‘cool’, arguing it amounted to Comey suggesting Trump, the 47th president, should be ‘86-ed’, or “removed.” Legal experts and the City Bar say those claims will be difficult for the government to prove in court.
“There is no indication that the government will be able to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Comey intended to threaten ‘to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon’ the President based on a social media post opining that someone else’s seashell arrangement on the beach of the numbers ‘86 47’ was ‘cool,’” the City Bar said.
Comey said he would fight the new indictment in a video statement posted Monday to his Substack.
“I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary,” Comey said. “So let’s go.”
The Monday indictment came the same day a Manhattan federal judge ruled Comey’s daughter and former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Maureen Comey could sue the Trump administration for unlawful termination. Maureen Comey has alleged that the president fired her out of political retribution because of her association with her father.
A federal judge dismissed the DOJ’s first indictment of James Comey in 2025, a few months after it was filed, ruling it an “unlawful exercise of executive power. The judge further ruled that Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor who secured it, was unlawfully appointed.
The first indictment alleged that the former FBI director made false statements to Congress and obstructed a Congressional proceeding, igniting similar criticism from the City Bar.
The second indictment, in the NYCBA’s view, “confirms” that Trump is using his Justice Department to go after political enemies, which, it says, “reinforces the perception that the machinery of federal criminal law is being deployed not in service of impartial justice, but as part of a broader campaign of retaliation.”
“At stake is not only the fate of any one individual, but the public’s faith in our system of justice,” the City Bar said. “The rule of law depends not only on fairness in fact, but on public confidence in the integrity and independence of prosecutorial decision-making. When successive, facially flimsy indictments follow prior concerns about political interference, that confidence is gravely undermined.”
The Department of Justice did not respond to amNewYork Law’s request for comment.