James Comey

Oct. 11 (UPI) — Former National Security adviser John Bolton might be charged with federal crimes next week for allegedly mishandling classified documents.

Federal prosecutors met on Saturday to weigh potential charges that would be filed in the U.S. District Court for Maryland, which is Bolton’s state of residence, according to CNN.

Bolton served as President Donald Trump‘s National Security adviser from April 9, 2018, to Sept. 10, 2019.

He has been under investigation for several years due to how he handled classified information, and Saturday’s meeting of federal prosecutors is to determine potential charges.

Bolton’s attorney Abbe Lowell dismissed claims that Bolton inappropriately handled classified documents, NBC News reported.

“An objective and thorough review will show nothing inappropriate was stored or kept by Amb. Bolton,” Lowell said in a prepared statement and referring to Bolton’s former position as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

She said the files in Bolton’s possession had been reviewed and closed, and he intended to use them while writing a book.

“These are the kinds of ordinary records, many of which are 20 years old or more, that would be kept by a longtime career official who served at the State Department, as an assistant attorney general, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and the National Security adviser,” Lowell said.

FBI agents in August searched Bolton’s home and his office in Washington as part of a national security investigation regarding classified documents.

Federal prosecutors are determining how they might pursue a federal grand jury indictment against him.

A grand jury indictment against Bolton would be the third secured by interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, whom Trump recently appointed after firing her predecessor for not pursuing such indictments.

Halligan recently obtained federal grand jury indictments against former FBI Director James Comey for allegedly lying to Congress in 2020.

Earlier this week, she also obtained a grand jury indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James for alleged bank fraud related to the purchase of a home in Alexandria, Va.

Oct. 7 (UPI) — Attorney General Pam Bondi testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, and refused to answer questions on several topics.

Bondi declined to answer questions about the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey regarding her discussions with President Donald Trump as well as the firings of Department of Justice attorneys who worked on Jan. 6 cases and her refusal to prosecute certain cases of Trump’s allies.

Bondi also avoided questions about the files of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and Trump’s alleged friendship with him. She responded that the Democrats should explain their own relationships with him, CNN reported.

Sen Richard Blumenthal, D-N.Y., said Bondi’s testimony was a new low for attorneys general.

“Her apparent strategy is to attack and conceal. Frankly, I’ve been through close to 15 of these attorney general accountability hearings, and I have never seen anything close to it in terms of the combativeness, the evasiveness and sometimes deceptiveness,” Blumenthal told reporters after leaving the hearing. “I think it is possibly a new low for attorneys general testifying before the United States Congress, and I just hope my Republican colleagues will demand more accountability than what we have seen so far.”

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., agreed with Blumenthal.

“She was fully prepared for, with specific and personal comebacks, accusing various of my colleagues, of challenging their integrity or challenging their basis for their questions in a way I’ve not ever seen,” Coons said.

The White House has already praised Bondi’s performance.

“She’s doing great,” a White House official told CNN. “Not only is the AG debunking every single bogus Democrat talking point, but she’s highlighting the Democrats’ own hypocrisy and they have no response.”

Bondi, along with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, criticized the judge in the case of Sophie Roske, the woman who planned an attack on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Roske, who called the police on herself before making contact with Kavanaugh, was sentenced to eight years in prison for the plot.

“My prosecutors did an incredible job on that case,” Bondi said. She said the Justice Department would appeal the sentence, which was 22 years below the federal guidelines and the minimum sentence prosecutors wanted. “The judge also would not refer to the defendant by his biological name,” Bondi said. Roske is transgender.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., asked Bondi what conversations she has had with the White House about investigations into Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Comey. Bondi again declined to answer.

“I’m not going to discuss any conversations,” Bondi said to Klobuchar, CBS News reported.

Klobuchar asked her about a Truth Social post by Trump last in which he asked Bondi why she hadn’t brought charges against Comey, Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“President Trump is the most transparent president in American history, and I don’t think he said anything that he hasn’t said for years,” Bondi said.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., pressed her on whether the FBI found any pictures of Trump “with half-naked young women,” saying that Epstein was reported to have shown them around.

“You know, Sen. Whitehouse? You sit here and make salacious remarks, once again, trying to slander President Trump, left and right, when you’re the one who was taking money from one of Epstein’s closest confidants,” Bondi responded, referring to tech entrepreneur and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who has said he regretted his contacts with Epstein, CBS reported.

Since Bondi took over at the Justice Department, she and her team have fired prosecutors who worked on capitol riot cases and pushed out career FBI agents.

The Public Integrity Section is nearly empty now, and more than 70% of the lawyers in the Civil Rights Division are also gone, NPR reported.

In a letter Monday, nearly 300 former Justice Department employees asked the Oversight Committee to closely monitor the department.

“We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously. Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we’re witnessing,” the letter said.

The letter also alleged poor treatment of staff.

“As for its treatment of its employees, the current leadership’s behavior has been appalling. … And demonizing, firing, demoting, involuntarily transferring, and directing employees to violate their ethical duties has already caused an exodus of over 5,000 of us — draining the Department of priceless institutional knowledge and expertise, and impairing its historical success in recruiting top talent. We may feel the effects of this for generations.”

Bondi said the DOJ stands by the “many terminations” in the department since Trump took office. “We stand by all of those,” she said.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in an opening statement, “What has taken place since Jan. 20, 2025, would make even President Nixon recoil.”

Durbin said Bondi has left “an enormous stain in American history.”

“It will take decades to recover,” he said.

The hearing is just two weeks after she sought and secured an indictment of Comey at the direction of the president. Democrats have said she’s weaponizing the Department of Justice, breaking with the longstanding tradition of keeping the department independent of political goals.

Comey was indicted on one count each of lying to Congress and obstructing justice for his testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020. Before the indictment, U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert refused to indict because of a lack of evidence against Comey. Trump accused him of waiting too long to indict and nearly allowing the statute of limitations to run out. Siebert resigned under pressure from the administration.

Last week, Durbin said the targeting of Trump’s political enemies is “a code-red alarm for the rule of law” in a floor speech, The Washington Post reported.

“Never in the history of our country has a president so brazenly demanded the baseless prosecution of his rivals,” he said. “And he doesn’t even try to hide it.”

But Republicans claim that Bondi’s leadership is necessary after years of what they say was politicized attacks from the Justice Department under the President Joe Biden administration.

“If the facts and the evidence support the finding that Comey lied to Congress and obstructed our work, he ought to be held accountable,” said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chair of the Judiciary Committee.

During her confirmation hearing, Bondi vowed that weaponization of the Justice Department is over.

“I will not politicize that office,” Bondi said at the time. “I will not target people simply because of their political affiliation.”

WASHINGTON — On a Phoenix tarmac in 2016, former President Clinton and U.S. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch had a serendipitous meeting on a private jet. The exchange caused a political firestorm. At a time when the Justice Department was investigating Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, the appearance of impropriety prompted a national scandal.

“Lynch made law enforcement decisions for political purposes,” Donald Trump, her Republican rival that year, would later write of the meeting on Twitter. “Totally illegal!”

It was the beginning of a pattern from Trump claiming political interference by Democrats and career public servants in Justice Department matters, regardless of the evidence.

Now, Trump’s years-long claim that it was his opponents who politicized the justice system has become the basis for the most aggressive spree of political prosecutions in modern American history.

“What Trump is doing now with the U.S. attorneys is really in complete opposition to how the people who created those offices imagined what those officials would do — the Founders simply did not envision the office in this way,” said Peter Kastor, chair of the history department at Washington University in St. Louis.

“From the inception of the Justice Department,” he added, “one of the most remarkable things is how it was never used in this way.”

On Thursday, at Trump’s express direction, federal charges were filed against James Comey, the former FBI director, alleging he gave false testimony before Congress and attempted to obstruct a congressional proceeding five years ago.

The indictment was secured from a federal grand jury after Trump fired a U.S. attorney with doubts about the strength of the case — replacing him with a loyalist, and telling Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi openly on social media to pursue charges against him and others.

“JAMES COMEY IS A DIRTY COP,” Trump wrote on social media after the charges were filed. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017, denies the charges.

“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way,” Comey said in a statement posted online. “We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either.

“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice. But I have great confidence in the federal judicial system,” Comey continued. “And I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith.”

Behind the charges against Comey, legal experts see a weak case wielded as a cudgel in a political persecution of Trump’s perceived enemy. Comey is accused of lying about authorizing a leak to the media about an FBI investigation through an anonymous source.

It is only the latest example. Over the summer, Trump’s director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Pulte, used his position to accuse three of the president’s political foes of mortgage fraud, referring the cases to the Justice Department for potential charges — actions actively encouraged by Trump online.

“It’s not a list,” Trump said Thursday, asked whether more prosecutions are coming. “I think there will be others. They’re corrupt. These were corrupt radical left Democrats. Comey essentially was Dem — he’s worse than a Democrat.”

The president’s overt use of the Justice Department as a partisan tool threatens a new era of political persecutions that could well backfire on his own allies. The Supreme Court has made clear that presidents enjoy broad immunity for their actions while in office. But their aides do not. Bondi, Pulte and others, just like Comey, are obligated to provide occasional testimony to House and Senate committees under oath.

“The Comey indictment is notable for its personalized politicization being so open,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College. “The same actions carried out clandestinely would seem scandalous, because they are — and the fact they were so blatantly advertised does not make them less corrupt.”

But the Comey case can also be seen as a test of the viability of a prosecution based purely on politics. Already, lawyers for Trump’s other legal targets have said they plan on using his overt threats against them to get cases against their clients thrown out in court.

This week, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, defended Trump’s vocal advocacy for criminal charges against political foes as a matter of “accountability.”

“We are not going to tolerate gaslighting from anyone in the media, from anyone on the other side who is trying to say that it’s the president who is weaponizing the DOJ,” Leavitt said.

“You look at people like [California Sen.] Adam Schiff, and like James Comey, and like [New York Atty. Gen.] Letitia James, who the president is rightfully frustrated with,” she continued. “He wants accountability for these corrupt fraudsters who abused their power, who abused their oath of office to target the former president.”

But Trump’s accusations against Democrats have routinely failed the tests of inspectors general, journalistic inquiry and public scrutiny.

When Trump was investigated over potential coordination between his campaign and the Russian government in the 2016 race, he claimed a liberal, “deep state” cabal was behind an inquiry based on, as the special prosecutor’s report concluded, “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.”

And when charged with federal crimes over his handling of highly classified material, and his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, he dismissed the charges as a witch hunt choreographed by President Biden and his attorney general, a claim that had no basis in fact.

The special counsel investigations against Trump, Kastor said, were “prosecutions, not persecutions.”

“His claims that the investigations surrounding him are specious — the investigations were appropriate,” Kastor added. “These investigations are not.”

Sept. 26 (UPI) — After the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, President Donald Trump said that more indictments are coming.

As he left the White House to head to the Ryder Cup in New York, he was asked by reporters who would be next on his list.

“It’s not a list, but I think there will be others. They’re corrupt. These were corrupt, radical-left Democrats,” The Hill reported Trump said.

“They weaponized the Justice Department like nobody in history. What they’ve done is terrible. And so I hope — frankly, I hope there are others. Because you can’t let this happen to a country.”

Trump added that the Comey indictment wasn’t about revenge.

“It’s about justice. … It’s also about the fact that you can’t let this go on. They are sick, radical-left people, and they can’t get away with it,” Trump said. “And Comey was one of the people. He wasn’t the biggest. But he was a dirty cop.”

A U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia grand jury indicted Comey on Thursday with one count each of making a false statement and obstruction. The indictment was based on oral testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020.

The indictment did not elaborate, but the charges seem to stem from when Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, asked Comey if he had allowed his deputy to speak with a reporter about an investigation into Trump.

Comey told Cruz that he didn’t.

Comey, a Republican, said after the indictment that he understood there was a price for standing up to Trump.

“We will not live on our knees,” he said. “And you shouldn’t either.”

Besides Comey, some people Trump has mentioned who should be prosecuted are New York Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff and former President Barack Obama.

File Photo by Mike Theiler/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 25 (UPI) — Former FBI Director James Comey will be tried for allegedly lying to Congress and obstructing justice amid a 2020 investigation into Russian collusion claims.

The U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia grand jury indicted Comey on two of three counts on Thursday, ABC News reported.

Interim U.S. Attorney for Eastern Virginia Lindsey Halligan secured the grand jury indictments against Comey after federal prosecutors earlier said they had no probable cause for charging the former FBI director.

Attorney General Pam Bondi lauded the indictments in a social media post on Thursday.

“Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people,” Bondi said, as reported by Axios.

“We will follow the facts in this case,” Bondi added.

The indictment comes less than a week before the statute of limitations would have expired in the matter and made it impossible to prosecute Comey for allegedly lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020.

The committee was investigating the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into alleged collusion between Russian officials with President Donald Trump‘s successful presidential campaign during the 2016 election.

The president accused former U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert of intentionally delaying action on the matter to allow the statute of limitations to expire in the matter and fired him.

The indictment means Comey will have to appear in court for an arraignment hearing that is yet to be scheduled, where he will have to enter a plea and possibly post a bond.

He could be imprisoned for up to five years and fined if found guilty of lying to Congress and another five years and potential fines if convicted of obstruction of justice.

Sept. 24 (UPI) — Former FBI Director James Comey is likely to be indicted soon on criminal charges in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia, several media outlets reported on Wednesday.

Three unnamed sources said Comey will be indicted in the coming days on to-be-determined charges for allegedly lying to Congress in 2020, according to MSNBC, The Independent and CNBC.

Evidence suggests Comey lied to Congress while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020, regarding the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into alleged Russian collusion with President Donald Trump‘s successful election campaign in 2016, MSNBC reported.

Federal law has a five-year statute of limitations on charges for lying to Congress while under oath, which would require charges to be filed against Comey no later than Tuesday.

The president urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to accelerate charges against Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James in a social media post on Saturday.

“They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” Trump said on Truth Social.

He accused two unnamed Democratic Party senators of pushing a “woke RINO” to become the district’s federal prosecutor for Eastern Virginia so that he could stonewall the investigation until the statute of limitations expires.

RINO is an acronym for Republican in name only.

Interim U.S. Attorney for Eastern Virginia Lindsey Halligan is expected to lead the pending prosecution, but U.S. attorneys from other districts also might participate.

If charged and convicted for allegedly lying to Congress while under oath, Comey could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and fined.

Former President Barack Obama nominated Comey as FBI director, a role that he held from Sept. 4, 2013, until Trump fired him on May 9, 2017.

Aug. 22 (UPI) — Former Jeffrey Epstein girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell told federal investigators that she never saw President Donald Trump do anything illegal or improper.

Federal investigators recently interviewed Maxwell for two days to learn more about what she might know regarding illegal activities related to Epstein.

She dismissed claims that the files contain condemning information about Trump.

“I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting,” Maxwell told the DOJ investigators, as reported by The New York Times.

“I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way,” she said.

“President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me,” Maxwell said. “I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now.”

Maxwell said she likes the president and always has, while she was being interviewed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche last month in Florida.

The Justice Department released a redacted transcript and audio files of the two-day interview on Friday.

Maxwell also denied that Epstein maintained a list of powerful individuals or engaged in a blackmail campaign to obtain money or favors from them.

She said Epstein likely had no association with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Maxwell also told Blanche she does not believe Epstein committed suicide but said he was not killed to protect powerful individuals.

Epstein was a controversial financier and convicted sex offender who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking and child sex abuse charges in New York City.

Other files held by the Department of Justice and related to the federal investigations of Epstein and Maxwell also were released on Friday.

Maxwell is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence after her 2021 conviction for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors over a 10-year period.

The DOJ was to begin sending some of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation files to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Friday.

The committee on Aug. 5 had subpoenaed the DOJ to gain access to the investigation files, which the DOJ agreed to begin sharing on Friday after redacting the names of alleged victims and child sex abuse materials, NPR reported.

Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., anticipated receipt of hundreds of Epstein file documents on Friday and has said at least some of them eventually will be made public.

“We’re going to be transparent,” Comer told media earlier this week. “We’re doing what we said we would do. We’re getting the documents.”

Comer submitted 11 subpoenas for federal investigation files regarding Epstein and his imprisoned accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, plus testimony from well-known witnesses.

The list of subpoenaed witnesses’ testimonies includes those by former President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, former FBI Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller, and former Attorneys General Bill Barr and Merrick Garland.

Committee members are to consult with the DOJ to ensure any shared files will not affect ongoing investigations and criminal cases, Forbes reported.

Although the files have not been made public yet, at least one congressional Democrat claims the Trump administration employed a distraction tactic to divert attention away from the Epstein files.

The FBI on Friday raided the home of former Trump administration National Security Adviser John Bolton for unknown reasons.

“It looks political” and “an attempt to distract from the other big news of the day, which is the first production of the Epstein files,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., told CNN on Friday, as reported by The Daily Beast.

He accused the Trump administration of wanting to “change the conversation repeatedly” and said such events will “happen every day because they don’t want people talking about the Epstein files or about their mismanagement of the economy.”

Bolton was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019 and has become a vocal critic of the president.

Trump said he was not briefed on the FBI’s raid, The Guardian reported.

July 23 (UPI) — The U.S. House Oversight Committee on Wednesday subpoenaed Ghislaine Maxwell as a subcommittee sought subpoenas for President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and the Justice Department.

A House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee also approved subpoenas to obtain Department of Justice records related to the Epstein files and deposing former President Bill Clinton and other Democrats.

Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., introduced the motion to subpoena the DOJ’s “full, complete [and] unredacted” Epstein files, which passed with an 8-2 vote.

Republican Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Brian Jack of Georgia and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania joined Democrats in voting in favor of the subpoena motion.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said he will sign the DOJ subpoena for the Epstein files, ABC News reported.

The subcommittee also seeks former President Clinton’s and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s depositions.

Others targeted for subpoenas include James Comey, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Robert Mueller, Alberto Gonzales and Jeff Sessions.

House speaker questions Maxwell’s credibility

The Oversight Committee wants to depose Maxwell on Aug. 11 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Fla.

Maxwell, 63, was an associate of former financier and convicted sex offender Epstein, who killed himself while jailed in New York City and awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges that included minors in 2019.

She also is the daughter of former British media mogul Robert Maxwell and is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Florida after a jury found her guilty of sex trafficking in 2021.

“The facts and circumstances surrounding both your and Mr. Epstein’s cases have received immense public interest and scrutiny,” Comer said in the subpoena.

Comer said the Justice Department also is undertaking “efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to your and Mr. Epstein’s cases.”

“It is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally,” he added, “and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of you and Mr. Epstein.”

Comer submitted the subpoena a day after a House Oversight subcommittee approved a motion that directed him to seek Maxwell’s testimony before the Oversight Committee.

The Justice Department on Tuesday also announced it will interview Maxwell soon to provide greater transparency in the case against Epstein.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Wednesday questioned the credibility of Maxwell’s testimony.

“Could she be counted on to tell the truth?” Johnson asked reporters. “Is she a credible witness?”

He called Maxwell “a person who’s been sentenced to many, many years in prison for terrible, unspeakable conspiratorial acts and acts against innocent young people.”

Federal judge denies Epstein grand jury files access

A federal judge on Wednesday denied one of three DOJ requests to release grand jury records from Epstein’s case there.

U.S. District of Southern Florida Judge Robin Rosenberg refused to unseal the grand jury testimony and records from cases against Epstein in 2005 and 2007.

Rosenberg said the Justice Department did not sufficiently outline arguments to unseal the court records.

She also denied a request to transfer the matter to the U.S. District Court for Southern New York.

Two federal judges there similarly are considering DOJ motions to unseal grand jury files from the former Epstein cases.

Bondi said Trump’s name is in the files

While those rulings are pending, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump his name appears in the Epstein files, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Bondi did not state the context in which Trump is mentioned, and White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said Trump did not engage in any wrongdoing.

Instead, Trump expelled Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club because the president thought Epstein was a “creep,” Cheung added.

Bondi earlier suggested she would release files related to the Epstein case, but recently said they don’t contain anything noteworthy.

Her announcement regarding the files triggered controversy, including among Republican congressional members.

Johnson canceled Thursday’s House session and said the chamber will recess until Sept. 2.

May 16 (UPI) — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Thursday night that DHS and the Secret Service are investigating a since-deleted picture former FBI Director James Comey published online as a threat targeting President Donald Trump.

“Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of @POTUS Trump,” she said online. “DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.”

Comey had published the now-deleted photo to Instagram. It showed shells on a beach arranged to form the numerals “86 47.”

“Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Comey had written in the caption.

The number 86 is widely used code in restaurants and the hospitality industry meaning an item is either sold out, no longer available or should be removed from a dish. The Merriam-Webster dictionary says it is slag meaning to eject, dismiss or remove.

The number 47 suggests Trump, who is the 47th president of the United States.

The president’s eldest child, Donald Trump Jr., published a screenshot of the deleted post to his X account, describing the image as “James Comey casually calling for my dad to be murdered.”

In a follow-up post on Instagram, Comey explained that he had assumed the shells conveyed a political statement but not one suggesting violence.

“I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence,” he said. “It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement that the FBI is aware of the post “directed at President Trump” and is in contact with the Secret Service.

“Primary jurisdiction is with SS on these matters and we, the FBI, will provide all necessary support,” he said.

UPI has contacted the Secret Service for comment.

Tulsi Gabbard, director of National Intelligence, also described the image on X as Comey issuing “a call to action to murder the President of the United States.”

In an interview with Fox News, Gabbard said Comey should be jailed for it.

“I’m very concerned for the president’s life,” she said. “And James Comey, in my view, should be held accountable and put behind bars for this.”

Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 until he was fired by Trump during his first term in 2017, during which his office investigated Russian interference into the 2016 election and Hillary Clinton‘s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.