Investigative journalist Paul Sperry has uncovered that the wife of former FBI Director James Comey, Patricia, sent him a screenshot of what Google said about the number combination 86 47, two minutes before Comey posted his own image on Instagram. As a law-enforcement officer, Comey knew that it was an incitement to murder, but was there also a more innocent meaning? His wife found that there was, and Comey therefore published the threat.
“Cool shell formation on my beach walk”, Comey wrote beneath the image, pretending that he had stumbled upon something someone else had made.
But the text and the screenshot from his wife show that Comey must have considered the consequences before posting it. Comey is a law-enforcement officer. In criminal circles, “86” means that someone is to be “taken out”. But it also has a more innocent meaning, for example that something is finished. Comey must have wanted to make sure that there was also a definition he could get away with.
At the time, Comey was promoting his book «FDR Drive», in which the main character is investigator Nora Carlson. She investigates a rising wave of far-right violence in New York, spurred on by online propaganda.
The question is whether Comey was in reality putting into practice what he wrote crime thrillers about.
He is facing a criminal case that comes to trial in October, for knowingly and wilfully making threats against the President’s life.
James Comey was indicted in May by a grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina on two felony counts.
COUNT NO. 1: Knowingly and wilfully making a threat to take the life of and inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States.
COUNT NO. 2: Knowingly and wilfully transmitting, in interstate and foreign commerce, a communication containing a threat to kill the President, Donald J. Trump.
Read the indictment here.
North Carolina District Judge Louise Flanagan, who was appointed by George W. Bush, agreed to postpone Comey’s trial until October.
CAUGHT: Comey’s Wife Texted Him Meaning of “86” Minutes Before His “86 47” Beach Stunt