OPINION / COMMENTARY
Deep-state architect who hunted patriots now begs for free speech after ’86 47′ post
On July 29, 2026, James Comey’s lawyers flooded a North Carolina federal courtroom with motions demanding the Trump Justice Department drop two felony threat charges. The former FBI director who opened the Russia collusion probe, who oversaw the machine that locked up January 6 defendants for years, now claims his own Instagram photo of seashells spelling “86 47” was pure political speech.
The record shows the post went up May 15, 2025, on a North Carolina beach. Caption: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” Comey deleted it hours later after the obvious reading hit. “86” has long meant get rid of. Forty-seven is the sitting president. Prosecutors charged him in April 2026 under 18 U.S.C. § 871 and § 875 with knowingly threatening the life of the president. Maximum exposure: ten years.
Comey’s team now cries selective prosecution and First Amendment violations. They detail how agents interviewed Gambino underboss Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, ran “86” through ChatGPT, and allegedly pinged Comey’s phone without a warrant after a high-level DOJ note. They claim President Trump demanded updates from Air Force One. They call it a yearslong personal vendetta.
Spare the tears. This is the same Comey whose bureau and allied prosecutors treated political opposition as sedition. The same network that celebrated 22-year sentences for Proud Boys leaders who never entered the Capitol. The same apparatus that kept men in solitary while media called them terrorists. Now the pendulum is swinging back, and the man who helped set the rules is discovering they cut both ways.
The establishment spent five years insisting speech could be crime when the targets wore MAGA hats. They cheered the raids, the solitary, the financial ruin of working men. They called it democracy. When the targets flip and a former FBI director posts the equivalent of “get rid of the president,” suddenly it is sacred political hyperbole. The hypocrisy is the point.
Trump’s DOJ did not invent the charge. Comey posted the image. He knew the climate. He deleted it. A grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina still returned the indictment. Judge Louise Flanagan, a Bush appointee, has the case. Trial is set for October. Comey will get his day in court—the same due process the machine once denied others.
This is war by other means. The deep state spent years using the criminal code as a political weapon. They came for the patriots. The patriots came back with the same code in hand. The establishment is running out of tricks. Accountability is not revenge. It is the minimum requirement of a republic that still claims to live under equal law.