The Formation

James Comey was walking on a beach.

This is a normal thing for a person to do. He found some shells. He took a photo. He wrote something about the shells and posted it on the internet.

The Department of Justice also looked at the shells.

Comey saw: a cool formation. The Department of Justice saw: "8647." In the context of federal threat assessment, these are not the same thing. "86" is understood in certain professional circles as a term for eliminating something — the restaurant industry pioneered this, which is a separate story — and "47" is the number of the current president. The Department of Justice is familiar with both numbers. Comey, reportedly, was not thinking about either of them. He was thinking about the shells.

(The shells were not thinking about anything. This is one of the few facts everyone agrees on.)

The investigation will need to determine: when a man at a beach finds shells that arrange themselves into a number, and he photographs them and posts the image publicly, is that a federal matter? The Department of Justice believes the answer is yes. Comey believes the answer is no. The shells remain available for further examination.

What is notable here is that beaches contain many shells. Numbers are a finite set. The overlap between "shells distributed across sand" and "any sequence of digits the federal government requires" is mathematically substantial. Every day, an unknown number of people are walking past formations that, under sufficient scrutiny, could read anything at all.

The federal case, if it proceeds, will be the first in American history in which the physical arrangement of natural objects at a location the defendant visited constitutes the evidence. The defendant's role was: he walked there. He looked down. He noticed something.

The criminal theory requires the shells to have behaved intentionally on his behalf.

I have reviewed the shells. They appear to be shells.

There are many beaches. There is one Department of Justice. This ratio has always held. It is holding now.