Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted in connection with an Instagram post from May of last year depicting seashells arranged on the beach. The indictment claims a reasonable recipient, who’s familiar with the surrounding circumstances, would interpret the post as a serious expression of intent to cause harm to the president.
In a recent episode of Bloomberg Law Radio, McCarter & English partner and former federal prosecutor Robert Mintz discussed the Justice Department’s indictment and noted that prosecutors face an uphill battle proving that the post constituted an actual imminent threat rather than protected political speech.