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- Former FBI Director James Comey asked a federal judge to dismiss his indictment on a charge of threatening to kill President Donald Trump.
- Comey’s lawyers said that the Instagram photo he posted of seashells spelling out the number “8647” did not represent a “true threat.”
- Comey’s attorneys also said the photo he took of the seashells on a North Carolina beach is free speech that is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.
FILE PHOTO: FBI Director James Comey testifies before the House Intelligence Committee hearing into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 20, 2017.Joshua Roberts | Reuters
Former FBI Director James Comey on Monday formally asked a federal judge to dismiss his indictment on a charge of threatening to kill President Donald Trump, saying that the photo he posted of seashells spelling out the number “8647” did not represent a “true threat.”
Comey’s lawyers, in their motion, said that the photo he took of the seashells on a North Carolina beach is free speech protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.
And they said that the numerical phrase 8647 is a “well-known political slogan that expresses opposition to the president.”
Comey is a leading critic of Trump, who fired him as FBI director in May 2017.
Comey has said he is being targeted by the Department of Justice because of Trump’s animus toward him.
Comey was indicted in April by a grand jury in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina on charges of threatening the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce.
It was the second time that Comey has been indicted during Trump’s second term in the White House after the president publicly suggested he had committed a crime.
Comey was indicted by a federal grand jury in Virginia last September on charges related to him allegedly lying during testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020, when he denied authorizing someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source for news reports about a probe of Hillary Clinton and her emails when she was the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.
Comey denied any wrongdoing.
A judge dismissed that first case in November after ruling that Lindsey Halligan, a former personal lawyer for Trump, was unlawfully appointed as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Halligan had obtained the indictment against Comey.
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