ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Former FBI Director James Comey made his first court appearance Wednesday in a criminal case against him that legal experts say presents significant hurdles for the prosecution and will likely be a challenge for the Justice Department to win.
Comey was indicted in North Carolina on Tuesday on charges of making threats against President Donald Trump related to a photograph he posted on social media last year of seashells arranged in the numbers “86 47.” The Justice Department contends those numbers amounted to a threat against Trump, the 47th president. Comey has said he assumed the numbers reflected a political message, not a call to violence, and removed the Instagram post once he saw some people were interpreting it that way.
The indictment is the second against Comey, a longtime target of Trump’s ire dating back to his time as FBI director, over the past year. The first one, on unrelated false statement and obstruction charges, was dismissed by a judge last November. Now prosecutors pursuing the threats case face their own challenge of proving that Comey intended to communicate a true threat or at least recklessly discounted the possibility that the statement could be understood as a threat.
