Yesterday, James Comey caused quite the stir when he went on Instagram and posted a picture of a shell formation on the beach — obviously one he made — that spelled out “86 47,” which many interpreted as a threat on President Trump’s life.
Since then, everyone’s been arguing over the definition of “86.” As slang goes, it has a wide variety of uses, some of which are more innocent, such as when you run out of a menu item at a restaurant you “86” it or when you get kicked out of a bar for being too drunk or unruly you’re said to be “86’d.” But it is also been used by the Mafia and the military to refer to killing people, and well, it’s a little harder to swallow that the man who prosecuted the Gambino crime family wasn’t aware of its more sinister meaning.
However, it gets worse than that for Comey. After posting the offending shell photo, the very next post on Instagram was him posting the favorable Publisher’s Weekly review of his third crime novel, out next week. What’s it about, you ask?
Former FBI director Comey (Westport) reunites the protagonists of his first two legal thrillers for his strongest outing yet. U.S. attorney Carmen Garcia is trying to take down Samuel Buchanan, a far-right media personality with a popular podcast vilifying those he thinks are destroying America: intellectuals, immigrants, and people of color. Garcia believes Buchanan went far beyond the protection of the First Amendment when he singled out his enemies by name and suggested “something should be done” about them. His fans have obliged, killing or grievously injuring some of his foes. In a series of tense and exhilarating courtroom scenes, Garcia works with Deputy U.S. Attorney Nora Carleton to bring Buchanan down. Then, just as they’ve convicted him, a new threat emerges …
So let me get this straight, Comey’s book is about successfully prosecuting a right-wing commentator for making vaguely worded threats? Really? (Also, “Samuel Buchanan”? I guess “Patrick Francis” wouldn’t have been on the nose enough for his liberal audience.)
Now obviously this is just a capsule review, and perhaps Comey’s novel goes into the legal complexities involved — the review goes on to say there’s “hand-wringing about following legal and constitutional protocol.” But given Comey’s demonstrably terrible and partisan judgment as a law enforcement official, it’s hard to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Fortunately for Comey, threatening the president this way isn’t necessarily a crime. (Comey probably should have been prosecuted for about a dozen other things that happened at the FBI during Russiagate.) There’s a Supreme Court case dealing with presidential threats that very generously extends the First Amendment to cover a lot of threats. In the ’60s, an 18-year-old who didn’t want to be drafted got tried and convicted for saying, “If they ever make me carry a rifle, the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.” The Warren court basically said that this was “political hyperbole,” and “context, and regarding the expressly conditional nature of the statement and the reaction of the listeners” must be considered, and they decided this was not a real threat.
Still, Comey could very well end up being prosecuted for his post. If he is prosecuted, his only real defense would be that he was so ignorant of things that he’s supposed to have expert knowledge of, such as Mafia lingo and what constitutes an actionable threat, that he didn’t know what he was doing. It doesn’t help that Comey has been quite public with his complaints that Trump and his administration have allegedly lied about and defamed him, so it would appear he has a motive to resent Trump. And if the prosecution depends on the establishing the “context” and “nature of the statement” to prove intent, a case against Comey could very well consider the plot of his recent novel, which is damning.
Because it seems pretty clear that one person who firmly believes in prosecuting even those threats that are open to interpretation, particularly against a president who was nearly assassinated twice in the last year, is … James Comey.
