Did Jim Comey call for the murder of Donald Trump?

Not clearly enough to be convicted of anything, but what was he thinking? And what do we need to learn from this?

Basic lessons after all the hupla: Stay off Instagram and think about what you say.

No one should need to remind James Comey of this. Like him or loathe him, he is a man of high intelligence and accomplishment. He’s a University of Chicago law grad, a former AUSA, Deputy AG, and FBI Director. You don’t get to those positions by being a dope. (Full disclosure: I’m a casual friend of Comey’s and a former colleague. We were both federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia during the Clinton years. He’s smart and focused. As I wrote, however, in an opinion piece eight years ago in US News & World Report, Trump was correct to replace him as head of the FBI, basically because he had made one error too many in his judgment about what to say to Congress).

The present controversy took off when it was revealed that Comey had put the following photo on his Instagram page:

It’s widely being said among Trump supporters (and Trump himself) that this was a call for assassination. The Left, and Comey, furiously deny it. Comey has said, in an account extensively reported (including here), that

…he “didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence” and that it “never occurred” to him that may be the case. He thought it merely was a “political message.”

The NeverTrump crowd was quick to support this interpretation. NPR, for example, maintains:

"Eighty-six" is a slang term that means "get rid of," and Trump is the 47th (and 45th) president of the United States. According to Merriam-Webster, the most common meaning of 86 — which has its roots in the service industry — is to "throw out" or "refuse service to" a customer. The dictionary notes that the term has also come to mean "to kill." But the dictionary says it does not include this meaning in the official entry "due to its relative recency and sparseness of use."

That’s true as far as it goes, but there’s more to the story. The attempt to sort-of sanitize this omits that the “86” in “8647” has a pretty specific meaning among those versed in criminal law. The meaning is to take the target 8 miles out of town and put him 6 feet under.

If anyone in the country is versed in criminal law, it’s James Comey. So he must be guilty, right, in the relevant morally reprehensible sense if not the legal sense?

Well, not so fast. I’m also pretty well versed in criminal law, and I had no idea what it meant. My wife had to tell me. And it turns out that it can mean anything from “kill him” to “get rid of him.” Comey obviously knew it had some sort of meaning. He’s not the kind of guy to be taking aimless snapshots along the beach, and he acknowledged that the image struck him as a “political message.”

So what’s the real story?

Ingrid Jacques from USA Today seems pretty sure:

[E]ven if one takes Comey at his word, what was the “political message” he supported exactly? As much as it drives the left insane, Trump won a second term fair and square, and he will be president for the next three and a half years….unless…something happens to him.

This is a very uncomfortable point to say the least, but it probably needs to be said out loud, comfortable or not: For months now, the NeverTrump crowd has been bellowing in sulfuric terms that Trump is a dictator; will bring American democracy to an end; represents the second coming of Hitler, etc., etc. Left conspicuously unsaid is what they aim to do about it. If their nightmare vision is what they say it is, how can violence against Trump to save the country not be in the picture?

Ahead of the November election, Trump faced not just one – but two – assassination attempts. The first nearly ended his life, with a bullet grazing his ear.

Those facts make Comey’s post that much more egregious and irresponsible.

This is undeniable in my view, but “egregious and irresponsible” is not criminal. If it were, half the Internet would be on trial — including DJT, who is as irresponsible in his rhetoric as anyone in town even when, as a matter of substance, he makes a lot of sense.

We’re living in a time when violence is increasingly prevalent as a form of “political protest.”

Take for instance, all the Teslas that have been firebombed because liberals are mad Tesla CEO Elon Musk is working with Trump. Worse, alleged assassin Luigi Mangione has been upheld as a warped “hero” by many for murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson because some people have gripes with the health insurance industry.

The Left and the media (forgive the redundancy) have been downplaying these stories as much as they can (which in the nature of things isn’t that much). But the Left’s suddenly dainty tastes don’t make the stories about Leftist violence either less true or less ominous.

As is often the case these days, unhinged rhetoric on one side begets it on the other. Some of the reaction from Trump administration officials is overblown.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, for instance, wrote on X that the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service were “investigating this threat and will respond appropriately” and that Comey "just called for the assassination" of Trump.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Fox News she thinks Comey “should be in jail.”

The people we entrust with the formidable power of government simply cannot shoot from the hip this way. Much as Ms. Gabbard is appealing in some ways, her remark about how, with no more than the present evidence, Comey “should be in jail” is considerably out of line. If I were back in White House Counsel’s Office, I would call her up and have, shall we say, an animated discussion. Not for nothing did the Founders decree that, in order to put a citizen in jail, the government must produce proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

That said, I don’t see how any normal person can disagree with Ms. Jacques’ conclusion: “The constant drumbeat of hysteria against a president who 77 million Americans voted for is dangerous – and could lead to real violence. For that, Comey deserves all the uproar that’s coming his way.”