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James Comey did not stumble onto a beach and innocently photograph some seashells. He is the former Director of the FBI. He spent decades studying exactly how coded language is used to signal violence against public figures. He led the Bureau through the rise of stochastic terrorism as a national security category. Then he posted “86 47” arranged in sand to hundreds of thousands of followers, with eighty-six being slang for elimination and forty-seven being the sitting President of the United States, who had survived two assassination attempts in the previous twelve months. He took the post down within hours, which is the move of a man who knew exactly what he had communicated and realized he had said it too plainly. Innocent posts do not get deleted within hours. The defense, that he simply did not connect the numbers to violence, is laughable. He was on a national press tour promoting his novel FDR Drive, a thriller about a public figure using coded messaging to incite his followers to commit acts of violence against political enemies. He told NPR the book’s central themes were free speech and “what happens when someone’s words incite violence.” A man cannot be on national radio explaining how coded incitement operates while simultaneously claiming he failed to recognize coded incitement in his own Instagram feed. That is not a coincidence. That is a confession delivered by a defendant who spent eight years building a public career on personal opposition to Donald Trump. The First Amendment is not a magic word. The Supreme Court ruled in Counterman v. Colorado in 2023 that true threats lose protection when the speaker consciously disregards a substantial risk his communication will be read as threatening violence. Comey’s expertise, his audience, his timing, his take-down, and his eight years of documented hostility toward the President all answer that question. He knew. He of all people knew. And in the end, the country needs to face what this case actually is: a former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation posting a coded call for the removal of a sitting President during an active assassination threat environment, then asking the same Bureau he once led to believe he meant nothing by it. Stop it.

Whether Comey is convicted or not, I'm reminded today of just how bizarre and absurd it was that he posted that picture at all. This is the former Director of the FBI, a man who paints himself as the exemplar of honor and who wrote a book entitled "A Higher Loyalty." Not only was the post arguably treasonous and has landed him in serious legal jeopardy, it's just painfully dumb. He will play the victim and feign ignorance that to "86 someone" could mean to kill them, but the whole episode is a national embarassment.