“No serious dispute” is possible against an arrangement of seashells spelling out 86 47 on a North Carolina beach as a potential threat against President Donald Trump, says the U.S. Department of Justice.
Former FBI Director James Comey posted a photograph from the Outer Banks on social media in May of last year. While his counsel has sought to dismiss the case, the government’s Tuesday filings in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina defended against such a move.
Comey is facing two federal counts of threats against the president.
Comey said he discovered the arrangement while walking the beach. He took down the social media post soon after putting it up, with an explanation that he didn’t know the numbers could be taken as a promotion of violence.
Prosecutors say two minutes before his post, Comey’s wife texted him a screenshot of the definition of 86 – to get rid of or refuse service.
The filing from prosecutors says, “There is no serious dispute that an objective viewer of Comey’s post could read it to mean ‘Kill President Trump."”
The arrangement was 4 miles down from beachfront property where Comey stayed. Prosecutors say text messages between Comey and his agent after the social media post included the former FBI director’s assertion he didn’t mean for a viral post, yet said, “I’ll be OK if it sells books.”
Comey’s Instagram account had an estimated 200,000 followers at the time, prosecutors say, and the reach to secondary users would be in the millions.
Judge Louise Flanagan has set arraignment for Sept. 30 in New Bern and a trial to begin Oct. 21.