{"id":217051,"date":"2026-05-01T20:37:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T20:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/217051\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T20:37:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T20:37:12","slug":"nyc-bar-association-condemns-trump-admins-revived-political-prosecution-of-former-fbi-director-comey-over-seashell-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/217051\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC Bar Association condemns Trump admin\u2019s revived \u2018political\u2019 prosecution of former FBI director Comey over seashell post"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York City Bar Association<\/a> said Thursday it was \u201cdeeply troubled\u201d by the Trump administration\u2019s renewed effort to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey through a Monday indictment<\/a> over a 2025 social media post of seashells, saying the case lacked substance and was clearly \u201cpolitically inspired retaliation.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the second time President Donald Trump\u2019s Department of Justice has indicted Comey on charges widely<\/a> 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\u2019s investigation into Russia\u2019s potential collusion with the president\u2019s campaign in the 2016 election.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWeaponization of the Justice Department to exact retribution against the President\u2019s perceived political foes reflects a profound betrayal of the American principle of prosecutorial independence and an alarming departure from the rule of law,\u201d the City Bar said in a statement<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s indictment, filed in North Carolina federal court, charges<\/a> Comey with threatening violence against the president for posting a photo of seashells he found on a beach arranged to depict the numbers \u201c86 47\u201d with the caption \u2018cool\u2019, arguing it amounted to Comey suggesting Trump, the 47th president, should be \u201886-ed\u2019, or \u201cremoved.\u201d Legal experts<\/a> and the City Bar say those claims will be difficult for the government to prove in court.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no indication that the government will be able to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Comey intended to threaten \u2018to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon\u2019 the President based on a social media post opining that someone else\u2019s seashell arrangement on the beach of the numbers \u201886 47\u2019 was \u2018cool,\u2019\u201d the City Bar said.<\/p>\n

Comey said he would fight the new indictment in a video statement<\/a> posted Monday to his Substack.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m still innocent, I\u2019m still not afraid and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary,\u201d Comey said. \u201cSo let\u2019s go.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The Monday indictment came the same day a Manhattan federal judge ruled<\/a> Comey\u2019s daughter and former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Maureen Comey could sue<\/a> 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A federal judge dismissed the DOJ\u2019s first indictment of James Comey in 2025, a few months after it was filed, ruling it an \u201cunlawful exercise of executive power. The judge further ruled that Lindsey Halligan, the prosecutor who secured it, was unlawfully appointed.<\/p>\n

The first indictment alleged that the former FBI director made false statements to Congress and obstructed a Congressional proceeding, igniting similar criticism<\/a> from the City Bar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The second indictment, in the NYCBA\u2019s view, \u201cconfirms\u201d that Trump is using his Justice Department to go after political enemies, which, it says, \u201creinforces 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt stake is not only the fate of any one individual, but the public\u2019s faith in our system of justice,\u201d the City Bar said. \u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice did not respond to amNewYork Law\u2019s request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The New York City Bar Association said Thursday it was \u201cdeeply troubled\u201d by the Trump administration\u2019s renewed effort…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[383,2842,9,24,55,54,56,85593,896],"class_list":["post-217051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-department-of-justice","tag-james-comey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-nyc-bar-association","tag-president-donald-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}