James Comey Is His Own Worst Enemy

At 3:07 in the video embedded above, Mark Halperin comes about as close to the truth as the Overton window will allow when he says of James Comey, "I've never seen somebody so unpopular act in public like he's so popular". On the other hand, Real Clear Politics has been unwilling even to touch the subject of the DOJ "8647" indictment over the past few days: that Comey is innocent is apparently not even a matter for civilized debate. Freedom of speech! Anyhow, "86" just means the the kitchen is out of soup!

But I'm a contrarian, not even a recovering contrarian. This all seems a little too cut-and-dried to me. First, a quick web search shows that people are convicted by juries, or plead guilty, for threatening the president all the time. For instance,

According to court documents, between Feb. 15, 2025, and May 15, 2025, Valeriy Kouznetsov, 41, made multiple threats toward the President of the United States, his family, and other government officials. Kouznetsov posted these threats on X (formerly Twitter), some of which he sent directly to the X accounts belonging to the President and other officials. For example, on March 28, 2025, Kouznetsov posted a message threatening the President with a “7/13 secret service repeat Philadelphia,” a reference to the July 13, 2024, attempted assassination of President Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Just last month, he was sentenced to two years and four months in prison. Or this:

Troy Kelly, age 20, of Crown Point, NY, plead guilty today to one count of a three-count indictment charging threats against the President of the United States.

. . . In pleading guilty, Kelly admitted that in May 2024 he posted a threat to kill President Biden on a social media website and that he intended it to be understood as a threat. Responding to a post of President Biden, Kelly told the then-President that he was “[g]onna put a bullet in your head if I ever catch you.”

At sentencing, the judge ordered him to have mental health treatment. In other words, people can be convicted of threatening the president of the US under what still seems to be a wide variety of specific statements and circumstances. According to Wikipedia,

The true threat doctrine was established in the 1969 Supreme Court case Watts v. United States. In that case, an eighteen-year-old male was convicted in a Washington, D.C. District Court for violating a statute prohibiting persons from knowingly and willfully making threats to harm or kill the President of the United States.

The conviction was based on a statement made by Watts, in which he said, "[i]f they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J." Watts appealed, leading to the Supreme Court finding the statute constitutional on its face, but reversing the conviction of Watts.

. . . the Court established that there is a "true threat" exception to protected speech, but also that the statement must be viewed in its context and distinguished from protected hyperbole. The opinion, however, stopped short of defining precisely what constituted a "true threat."

Traditionally, the standard for whether a true threat could be punished was based its effect on a "reasonable person" in the shoes of the person who received the threat. In 2023, Counterman v. Colorado abolished that "objective" test. Counterman established a "subjective" test that required a state to show evidence that the accused subjectively understood the nature of their threat and consciously, recklessly disregarded that nature.

A few people have argued, as I did Wednesday, that on one hand, Comey is both a former Deputy Attorney General and a former FBI Director, whose agencies had investigated and prosecuted at minimum dozens of threat cases, and he had to have been aware of what he was doing. Comey made the "8647" post on May 15, 2025, we must presume fully aware of the July 13, 2024 Butler, PA assassination attempt on Trump and the September 15, 2024 assassination attempt at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, while Trump was golfing.

Comey is a major public figure whose statements consistently attract attemtion. In fact, although he deleted the post shortly after he made it, it attracted immediate attention and was widely re-posted.

Comey deleted the photo shortly after it was made, writing: “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence” and “I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

In an interview with MSNBC, Comey said he assumed the numbers reflected a political message in reference to Trump because of the number "47," but not a call to violence against the Republican president. He called the allegations "crazy."

At least to me, this is Comey being a little too cute. He posts something that just barely crosses the line, but then he deletes it after it nevertheless attracts major attention -- but he wants credit for deleting it, because he claims he opposers violence, and he didn't understand "86" could mean wipe somebody out, he thought it just meant the kitchen was out of soup. (In my younger, single days, I spent some time in bars, where "Manager, 86" was a frequent call on the PA, referring to the need to eject an obnoxious customer. In fact, I dated a lady bartender who routinely used the term in that context -- she'd jokingly threaten to "86" me from our date.)

And this is the Comey who got a little too cute over Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server:

In July [2016], FBI director James Comey announced that the FBI investigation had concluded that Clinton had been "extremely careless" but recommended that no charges be filed because Clinton did not act with criminal intent, the historical standard for pursuing prosecution.

On October 28, 2016, eleven days before the election, Comey notified Congress that the FBI had started looking into newly discovered emails. On November 6, Comey notified Congress that the FBI had not changed its conclusion. Comey's timing was contentious, with critics saying that he had violated Department of Justice guidelines and precedent, and prejudiced the public against Clinton. The controversy received more media coverage than any other topic during the presidential campaign.

The result, as we see in the Mark Halperin clip above, where his liberal guest remarks, "You're never going to catch me defending Jim Comey. You guys know how I feel about him from 2016", is that nobody, left or right, much likes the guy -- he's just a little too cute. That cuteness even comes out in the latest context for his "8647" indictment:

BREAKING: The DOJ is now pushing to SEIZE James Comey’s profits from his crime book, as prosecutors believe part of the reason he posted a threat on President Trump’s life was to DRUM UP book sales

DOJ is going HARD after this guy 🔥

The “forfeiture action” included in Comey’s… pic.twitter.com/aW1At0bRAk

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) April 29, 2026

He knew full well what the public reaction to the "8647" post would be, even if he took it down a few hours later, which goes to his recklessness in posting it. Victor Davis Hansen makes a good point at 2:30 below:

There's a little bit of wrinkle to this, because people were kinda startled when the attorney general announced his investigation into this, but then he said this was a long investigation, and we investigated a lot of messaging. So what I'm getting at is if there's something more, what would that more be? If he said something in a private e-mail that didn't come under attorney-client privilege, and it said maybe to his friend or his daughter, this is cool, or this is neat, or this is a good way to threaten the president. . . let's withhold judgment until we find out.

In other words, Comey just plays things a little too close to the line, he's always just a little too cute, and as a consequence of that, he has enemies. I don't think it's going to be as simple for him as getting his case dismissed over freedom-of-speech. The standard in Watts v. United States was abolished in 2023; nobody mentions that, and I betcha Comey doesn't know that, either. Heck, I wonder if his lawyers do. The law is no longer as clear as that, and Comey seems to be skating on the idea that he's a lot more popular than he really is.