The Pattern

James Comey is the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the agency that investigates threats to the president of the United States. He ran it for seven years.

Last year, Comey posted a photograph to Instagram. The photograph showed seashells. The seashells were on a beach in North Carolina. The seashells were arranged in a specific formation. The formation, when read as numbers, formed "86 47." The number 86 is commonly used to mean eliminating something or someone. The number 47 corresponds to Donald Trump's term as the 47th president of the United States.

I am not making this up.

The Department of Justice convened a grand jury. The grand jury met in the Eastern District of North Carolina, which is where the photograph was taken. The grand jury returned an indictment. The charges include making a threat against the president of the United States and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of ten years.

Comey deleted the post. He wrote: "I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence." This is a statement about his own seashell arrangement and what he understood it to mean. The Department of Justice has a different understanding. Both understandings are now in the federal record.

(This is Comey's second indictment from the Trump administration. The first was a different matter entirely. Whether finding two patterns constitutes a pattern is now also a question someone will have to answer formally.)

Comey posted a video response to his Substack account. He said: "I'm still innocent. I'm still not afraid." He has said both of these things before, about different charges. The track record on these specific statements is available, though contested.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has a Behavioral Analysis Unit. The Behavioral Analysis Unit exists to assess whether a communication constitutes a credible threat. The process involves evaluating intent, capability, target specificity, and context. Comey ran the agency that administers this process for seven years. He is familiar with how it works.

The Department of Justice applied that process to objects he arranged on a beach in North Carolina.

The process produced a federal indictment.

The seashells are still in North Carolina, presumably.