Attorneys for James Comey have requested a federal judge to dismiss the seashells-based prosecution of the previous FBI director, arguing that “dictionaries, context, precedent, and common sense” intestine the Trump administration’s declare {that a} picture he posted on Instagram may presumably represent an precise menace towards President Donald Trump.
If the case had been to survive the legal challenges, it would go to trial in October. Comey was indicted by a grand jury within the Eastern District of North Carolina in April. Prosecutors argued that a picture he posted on-line of seashells grouped in the formation of the numbers “86 47” was a menace towards the president. Matthew Petracca, a rookie federal prosecutor and former Republican official who first introduced the case, has since moved off the case.
The time period “86” is widely understood to be a restaurant term that means to be out of one thing. Trump is the forty seventh president.
Comey’s staff argued in a courtroom submitting Monday that no cheap particular person conscious of the related context would learn the phrase as a suggestion of violence and that — even when it may very well be learn that means — “a reasonable observer would still understand Mr. Comey’s post as mere political hyperbole, not a true threat.”
“The Supreme Court has rejected threats prosecutions based on speech far more directly threatening than Mr. Comey’s seashells post here,” the team of eight attorneys wrote.
“Forcing Mr. Comey to stand trial for a statement opposing the President — even if he is ultimately acquitted — would itself be an unconstitutional punishment of free speech,” they wrote.
The Justice Department has until Aug. 18 to reply to Comey’s motions to dismiss the case.
Comey’s staff is predicted to file a movement arguing that the case is the product of selective and vindictive prosecution by Tuesday.
A federal judge within the District of Columbia separately ruled that it was “difficult to fathom how any reasonable observer” would view an “8647” flag flown by protesters on National Park Service land as a real menace. During oral arguments, the federal government itself conceded there have been circumstances by which these numbers collectively wouldn’t be thought-about a menace towards the president.
Comey has stated the seashells case highlights Trump’s “bottomless desire“ for revenge.
Last year, a Trump ally who had never worked as a prosecutor before brought a separate case against Comey over congressional testimony he gave back in 2020, but a federal judge dismissed that case after ruling Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully appointed.
The lawyers argued the case is about protected free speech, and seeking to prosecute the case would only discourage free debate over politics — a tenet of American society.
Comey’s team also argued that Trump’s public pronouncements have been far more violent: The president “asserted that a video posted by several Members of Congress criticizing military policy was ‘punishable by death’ and was cause for ‘hang[ing] them’”; he remarked through the 2016 marketing campaign that “Second Amendment people” is perhaps the one ones who may cease Hillary Clinton if she had been elected; he made feedback about Rep. Liz Cheney being a “radical war hawk” after which said, “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
Comey’s attorneys additionally pointed to a line Trump’s authorized staff made as they sought to dismiss the Jan. 6, 2021, case against him.
“As the president himself has argued when he was a defendant in a criminal case, an ‘indictment must be dismissed’ where it ‘seeks to criminalize core political speech and advocacy that lies at the heart of the First Amendment,” they wrote.
