When the King’s Lawyer Becomes the King’s Prosecutor: The Second Coming of the Comey Indictment

When the King’s Lawyer Becomes the King’s Prosecutor: The Second Coming of the Comey Indictment

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #882: Tuesday, April 28th, 2026.

You’ve seen this movie before…

You watched the first reel back in September. You watched the credits roll in November…when a federal judge threw the whole thing in the trash…because the prosecutor who signed the indictment…had no business signing anything.

And…now…the studio has cut a sequel.

Today…Tuesday, April 28, 2026…a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina handed up a second indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.

Not for lying to Congress this time. They tried that. It collapsed.

The judge ruled that Lindsey Halligan…Trump’s former personal lawyer who’d been parachuted in as interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia…had been unlawfully appointed.

The whole prosecution evaporated. Letitia James got the same deliverance the same day.

So…they regrouped.

And what did they come back with?

Seashells.

Read that again. Slowly. Let it sit.

Seashells.

The second indictment of a former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation… the man who once stood at the apex of American law enforcement…is built around an Instagram photograph of seashells arranged on a beach to spell “86 47.”

Comey posted the photo on May 15, 2025. He captioned it: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

The minute the administration’s allies started shrieking that “86” was code for assassination, Comey deleted the post. He explained — publicly, in writing — that he assumed the numbers were a political message and that he hadn’t realized some people connected the slang to violence. He said he opposes violence of any kind. The Secret Service interviewed him for hours. They walked away.

That should have been the end of it.

It wasn’t even close to the end of it.

Because the people in charge now don’t operate by the old rules. They operate by a single rule…

The president’s enemies must bleed.

Let’s talk about who’s running this play.

Pam Bondi is gone. Trump fired her at the start of this month.

The reason…reported across multiple outlets…was that she wasn’t moving fast enough on the political prosecutions Trump has been demanding.

She was struggling to build cases that wouldn’t fall apart on first contact with a federal judge. She was…in Trump’s eyes…soft.

Enter Todd Blanche.

Blanche was elevated from Deputy Attorney General to Acting Attorney General. And Blanche is not Bondi.

Blanche is a Trump original…the man’s former personal criminal defense attorney. The lawyer who stood beside him in the Manhattan courtroom during the hush money trial. The man…who once defended the king…is now the man wielding the king’s sword.

Read what Blanche said when he took the role…

He said he believes President Trump has the “right” to order investigations into his political adversaries.

The “right.”

Not the constitutional question. Not the prosecutorial discretion question. Not the long American tradition of independence between the White House and the criminal division of the Department of Justice…a wall built specifically because we watched what happened in regimes where it didn’t exist.

The right.

Within weeks of Blanche’s elevation…the Justice Department announced charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Justice Department subpoenas…are now headed for Fani Willis’s bodyguards.

Career prosecutors who’ve raised concerns about rushed cases…including in the John Brennan investigation in Florida…are being moved out of the way. Four Biden-era prosecutors who worked on cases against abortion protesters were fired in Blanche’s first week.

This is the pattern. This is the doctrine.

And Comey…is the trophy.

Now…

Pause for a moment. Take a breath. And ask yourself the question…the corporate press will not ask you in a clean sentence…

What is the actual federal crime here?

A man took a walk on a beach. He saw shells. He photographed them. He posted the photograph. When people interpreted it as something he didn’t intend…he removed it within hours and explained himself publicly.

That’s it.

That’s the alleged crime.

To make a “true threat” stick under federal law…prosecutors must clear the bar set by the Supreme Court in Counterman v. Colorado in 2023.

They have to show that the speaker understood his message would be perceived as threatening. They have to climb up over the First Amendment with a specific kind of evidence about the speaker’s actual state of mind.

Prosecutors have to prove Comey knew…when he saw shells on a beach and snapped a photo…that he was threatening the President of the United States.

Legal experts contacted by every major outlet today are saying some version of the same thing. This case is fruitless. This case is doomed. This case can’t possibly survive what the First Amendment requires.

And here’s the thing about that…

The administration knows.

They know it doesn’t have to win.

It only has to be filed.

This is the part most readers will miss if you don’t slow down for it.

The conviction is not the point. The trial is not the point. The verdict is not the point.

The point…is the indictment itself.

The point is the headline. The point is the mugshot footage. The point is the press conference. The point is the legal bills that bankrupt the target. The point is the chilling effect that radiates outward from the news of a former FBI director being criminally charged for posting seashells on Instagram.

Because…if the second-most-protected federal law enforcement professional in the country…a man with the most expensive defense attorneys in America on speed dial… can be dragged through a second federal prosecution over a photograph…

What about you?

What about the journalist…who posts something sharp at 11 p.m.?

What about the small donor…who tweeted at the wrong congressman?

What about the retired colonel…who wrote the letter to the editor?

The chilling effect is the policy. The chill is the goal. The chill is the deliverable.

There’s something else here you need to see clearly.

Earlier today…the same Tuesday, the same news cycle…

…a federal judge ruled that Maurene Comey, James Comey’s daughter…can move forward with her wrongful termination lawsuit in federal court.

Maurene was the prosecutor on Diddy. On Epstein. On Maxwell. On Menendez. Two weeks after Combs was convicted on two counts…she got an email firing her under “Article II of the Constitution.”

Read that timing again.

A judge clears Maurene’s lawsuit to proceed in the morning. By the afternoon…her father has been indicted for the second time in seven months.

You’re not supposed to notice these things in sequence. The news cycle is built to keep them in separate boxes. But…the calendar tells you what the coverage will not.

This is one operation. One family. One target. One coordinated pressure campaign.

So here is where we are…

A man was fired by the President in 2017 for refusing to pledge personal loyalty.

He has been a critic ever since. The first attempt to put him in federal prison…fell apart because the prosecutor was improperly installed.

The second attempt is built on a photograph of seashells…and a constitutional theory that the most generous First Amendment scholar in America…cannot make survive a motion to dismiss.

Meanwhile…the man’s daughter…who put Diddy and Epstein and Maxwell behind bars…was fired and is now in federal court fighting for her career.

Meanwhile…the Acting Attorney General is the President’s former personal defense attorney…openly stating the President has the “right” to order prosecutions of his enemies.

Meanwhile…the Justice Department…is subpoenaing the bodyguards of the prosecutor who indicted Trump in Georgia.

Meanwhile…career officials raising concerns about rushed cases are being purged.

Meanwhile…the Southern Poverty Law Center is now a federal target.

You are watching the construction of something. In real time. Through a window …most of your neighbors aren’t even glancing at.

You are watching the conversion of the Department of Justice…the most consequential prosecutorial body on earth…into a personal instrument.

The Founders built a wall between the executive…and the prosecutorial.

Brick by brick, that wall is being unstacked. Some of the bricks are being thrown. Some…are being carefully set aside for later use…against people whose names you don’t know yet.

Comey is not the story.

Comey is the signal.

The story is what comes next…and who.

The story…is the fact that for the second time in seven months…the United States Department of Justice…has indicted a former director of the FBI…on a theory that career prosecutors and First Amendment scholars regard as legally absurd…

…and they did it anyway.

Because the absurdity…is not a flaw in the plan.

The absurdity is the plan.

Hold the line. Watch the calendar. Watch the names that come next.

And…don’t ever again…let anyone tell you this is normal.

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. The next time someone in your life tells you the country is fine… that the institutions are holding…that you're being dramatic…show them this article.

Show them the date. Show them the charge.

A former Director of the FBI…indicted by the United States Department of Justice… over a photograph of seashells. Then ask them…gently…what they think the third indictment looks like.

And…the fourth. And…whose name is on it. Because the people running this play…are not finished. They are warming up.

Sources:

• CNN — Justice Department indicts former FBI Director James Comey for a second time

• Washington Post — James Comey indicted for second time by Justice Department

• NPR — Justice Department indicts former FBI director James Comey for a second time

• PBS NewsHour — James Comey indicted in probe over online post

• NBC News — James Comey indicted over seashell photo

• ABC News — James Comey indicted again, this time over seashell Instagram post

• CBS News — Comey indicted again on charges stemming from Instagram post