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Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration is taking another turn in the list of its enemies.
What happened? On Tuesday, former FBI Director James Comey was indicted for a second time on new federal charges; prosecutors allege that a 2025 social media post that Comey made, showing a seashell arranged to read “86 47,” was a “threat to kill, and physically harm,” Donald Trump.
Trump is the 47th president, and “86” is widely understood to be the language of the service industry by denying or removing something or someone, depending on the context – but prosecutors, and some Republicansinstead they have chosen to interpret it as a call to kill Trump.
At the time, Comey said he did not understand any violent connotations of the word and quickly removed his post in response to the backlash.
Why Comey? Trump has long sought to punish Comey for his role in investigating ties between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016.
In particular, Tuesday’s indictment is a clear repeat of a similar attempt last year, when the Trump administration briefly — and incompetently — indicted Comey on. a different set of weak chargeswhich were later rejected.
(Even, we should note, the only such attempt today: The administration also stepped up its attack on late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s employer, ABC, on Tuesday, after the president and first lady Melania Trump went after Kimmel for a joke. Kimmel was briefly forced off the air by the administration last fall.)
what is the main picture? Earlier this month, Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, replacing her with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former member of Trump’s personal legal team.
Trump’s frustration with Bondi was well known; in September, he published a message directed at him, complaining that “Nothing is being done” against his enemies. Blanche, who is looking for a permanent AG job, is clearly trying to fix that as soon as possible, no matter how ridiculous the charges are.
