STORY: :: Legal experts say the indictment of James Comey is flawed and will be dismissed

"Justice Department has indicted the former FBI director James Comey, who goes by Jim Comey."

:: Jan Wolfe, Legal affairs correspondent

"The core accusation is that an Instagram post with some seashells saying '86, 47' conveyed serious threat of injury or death against Trump. Legal experts say this is a really weak case because while true threats can of course be criminalized and prosecuted, it's a really high bar to meet that under our First Amendment jurisprudence, which gives really broad free speech protections to Americans."

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"Eighty-six, well, you know, linguists say that this is a term in the restaurant industry. It can mean to be out of an item or to eject someone. // As I understand it, it is a term that in certain contexts can mean eliminate or kill. Like in the military context, it has been used that way. Trump has said that it's a mob term."

:: April 29, 2026

TRUMP: "You ever see the movies? '86 him', the mobster says to one of his wonderful associates, '86 him' and that means 'kill him'."

"I've seen linguists talk about this term, and you know THAT has not come up. // To sustain a criminal conviction, you can't have any reasonable doubt."

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"There have not been that many prosecutions under this statute about threatening the president... There's been cases involving much stronger language, much more menacing language that have been found to be political speech that cannot be grounds for a conviction. There was a case from 1969 that's really on point involving a military protester who's speaking about the draft conscription, said, you know, 'If they give me a gun, the first person I'm going to point to is LBJ,' the former president. And the Supreme Court said that is political hyperbole. They said, you know it's part of a free society with a robust exchange of ideas, you're going to have some ugly speech. And that's simply, that was not menacing and threatening enough and direct enough to sustain a conviction. 

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"You actually have a social media post that Trump wrote where it was addressed to Pam Bondi, the former DOJ, saying, 'It's time to speed up these investigations and he mentioned Comey by name. Trump has not done himself any favors by speaking so much about Comey and about urging his Justice Department to bring cases against his perceived political enemies."