Former FBI Director James Comey has warned of Donald Trump’s “bottomless desire” for revenge after he was indicted for a photo of seashells that the Department of Justice claims amounts to “making threats to harm” the president.
Comey, who became a fierce Trump critic after the president fired him during his first presidential term, spoke out Monday in his first interview since the latest indictment.
“Donald Trump has a bottomless desire to gain revenge against those who criticized him,” Comey told MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace.
“There’s a cost to speaking up in this strange era, awful era we’re in now,” the former FBI director said. But, he insisted that he won’t stop criticizing Trump “because I think that’s required if you care about America.”
The Independent has reached out to the White House for comment.
In May 2025, Comey posted a photo on social media of seashells on the beach that read “86 47.” The first number is a slang term for getting rid of something and is often used in the restaurant industry, and the second is a presumed reference to Trump, who is currently the 47th president of the U.S.
Comey has maintained his innocence and emphasized his belief in the “independent federal judiciary.”
But the former FBI chief predicted that “if this case falls apart, they’ll come up with something else.”
This is the second time the DOJ has brought an indictment against Comey in the past several months.
Last September, Comey was formally charged with making a false statement and obstruction of a congressional proceeding in connection with testimony he gave to senators five years before. Comey pleaded not guilty in the case.
About two months later, a federal judge dismissed Comey’s case, as well as another case against another Trump rival, New York Attorney General Letitia James.
James, who successfully sued Trump over allegations of fraud in his family’s real estate business, was indicted last October for bank fraud and false statements to a financial institution. She also pleaded not guilty in the case.
The cases were dismissed because U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie determined that then-Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan, who was prosecuting the cases, had been illegally appointed.
The DOJ has also gone after John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor turned critic. Last October, Bolton was formally charged with transmission of and unlawful retention of national defense information. He has pleaded not guilty as well.
Obama recently slammed the Trump administration for its prosecution of Trump’s perceived political enemies.
“The White House shouldn’t be able to direct the attorney general to go around prosecuting whoever the president wants to prosecute,” Obama told Stephen Colbert, host of CBS’s The Late Show, in an interview that aired last Tuesday.
Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche called allegations that the DOJ is seeking retribution with its actions “simply false” in a subsequent interview with CBS News.
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