The seashells scenario is being repeated in my mind as a way to keep the “TDS assassins wanting to do away with the president” narrative in the mainstream media for the present news cycle. This is a nothing burger as far as it is an invalid prosecution (again.) The administration is on their “Repeat…Rinse…Refile” cycle. Distraction from all the present distractions of war, economy, crime, grifting, ballrooms, and EPSTEIN.
CC...you've put your finger on something most readers miss entirely.
The seashell case is doing two jobs simultaneously...keeping the "deranged Comey threatened the President" frame alive...in cable chyrons...and...burning bandwidth that would otherwise be spent...on the genuinely damaging stories.
Epstein especially.
EVERY news cycle the Comey indictment dominates...is a news cycle the Melania-Ungaro-Epstein thread...the ballroom grift...and the war drift do NOT.
The "Repeat, Rinse, Refile" rhythm you're describing...is the ACTUAL mechanism.
They do NOT need the prosecution to succeed. They need it to OCCUPY the slot. That is the whole point. Thanks for being one of the readers who can see what the noise is for.
I’d like to know how much these “revenge” prosecutions are costing taxpayers? If they’re thrown out, can the person being prosecuted file a frivolous prosecution lawsuit?
BG...great question...and...one nobody in the corporate press is asking with any rigor.
Direct prosecution costs...prosecutor salaries...FBI agent hours...grand jury proceedings... expert witnesses...typically run into the millions for a federal case of this complexity...and...the defendant almost NEVER recovers their own legal fees.
The Hyde Amendment...passed in 1997...technically allows a defendant to recover attorney's fees...IF the prosecution was "vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith,"...but...the bar is brutally high...and...procedural dismissals like the Halligan ruling...don't qualify.
As for civil suits... yeah...federal prosecutors enjoy absolute immunity for prosecutorial decisions...which is one of the reasons this ENTIRE playbook is so attractive to the people running it.
The accountability mechanisms exist on paper...BUT...were not designed for a coordinated political prosecution campaign. That gap...is part of the story.
File the date: April 28, 2026. A federal grand jury indicted a former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the second time in seven months — the first attempt having collapsed when the unlawfully appointed prosecutor’s indictment was thrown out by a federal judge. The new charge: a photograph of shells on a beach. The man who brought it: Todd Blanche, the president’s former personal criminal defense attorney, now Acting Attorney General, who upon taking the role stated that the president has the “right” to order prosecutions of his political adversaries. Note the word he chose. Not the authority. Not the discretion. The right. The Founders built a wall between the executive and the prosecutorial specifically because they had watched what happened in regimes where that wall did not exist. They had lived it. Note which wall is being taken down brick by brick.
Jack is correct that the conviction was never the point. Note what First Amendment scholars and career prosecutors said within hours of the indictment — that this case cannot survive a motion to dismiss, that the constitutional bar under Counterman v. Colorado requires proof of the speaker’s actual state of mind, that the theory is legally absurd. The administration knows. Regimes that use law as a weapon require absurd charges — the absurdity is not a flaw in the plan, it is the demonstration. It says: we can do this to anyone. Comey is not the story. Comey is the signal. Watch the calendar. Watch the names that come next.
Jane...you've taken the analysis and extended it past where I left off...the Founders point... in particular...is the part most readers will not arrive at on their own.
They built the wall...because they had lived it.
That is the line that should be on the wall of EVERY civics classroom in the country right now.
Your read...on the absurdity is EXACTLY correct...the absurdity is not a bug...it's the demonstration.
"We can do this to anyone." THAT...is the message the seashell indictment is sending... and you've named it cleanly.
Thank you for reading this carefully, Jane. Readers like you are why I do this work.
Great analysis Jack. I certainly can guess why? Remembering the Jack Smith hearing and a Republican showed a list of (don’t recall if he said political enemies or not) Americans to be prosecuted, didn’t finish all the names. For what doing there job of Truth/Facts? Besides that Biden and his daughter or granddaughter is on that list.
1st Amendment rights are still under attack for anyone that doesn’t threaten anyone (hateful rhetoric from the WH name calling etc using Truth Social and far right X threatens others) yet MAGA can threaten, get away with it and continues to threaten Americans (like Jeffries/Democrats in Congress or anyone in general) for speaking the Truth.
Truth/Facts matter, Rule of law matters, Righting the Wrong in Court matters, Justice matters, Our Democracy matters more, our Constitution matters, our Rights and our Freedoms and our Lives matter. Just needed to vent, Enough said for now. Except acting DOJ was not confirmed in the Senate and didn’t take the Oath either.
You're remembering correctly...Rep. Raskin read from an enemies list circulated in MAGA circles...with Biden family members on it...alongside career prosecutors...and journalists.
The asymmetry...you're naming is the heart of it. One side gets prosecuted for a seashell photo. The other...calls sitting members of Congress TAITORS...with no consequence.
THAT... is the definition of a politicized justice system.
Your point about Blanche's confirmation status is sharp...almost NO ONE is covering it.
The list you closed with...is the ACTUAL stack of things at stake.
Naming it OUT LOUD... is itself...an act of resistance.
I’m humbled and grateful for your response and support it means a lot to me. Sharing something with you that my late Auntie told me before she passed away before Thanksgiving 2017. I would be a good teacher or lawyer. That was on my bucket list instead defending our Nation was my highest priority at the time and continues. She knew I was on Twitter and said be sure to tell the truth. I will I replied. I’ll share more later but it’s been a day. Thank you again Jack
Every day, in every way, this regime turns to the dark side. And to think the executive order to use firing squads, well. Here's hoping the Judiciary is going to be #HoldingFast
Intimidation, threatening, is this the last gasp of a gang of thugs? Sure hope so. #HoldingFast because I did not give years of my life moving around the world with my Air Force husband to let these thugs win.
So far, they haven’t managed to get a single one of those warehouses opened though. States and local authorities and citizens are pushing back. Most Americans do not want this. Rachel Maddow did a piece on it.. a video. Probably on YouTube. I posted or reposted it (forget which) on Threads.
This is another way to get the distraction from the war, price of gas at $8/gallon in some parts of the country and diesel will be even more. The war is not going as planned and the under 30 aged group now has a -46% rating of this president and his administration. They had been much earlier +50% for him. I was reading the the Steady State and they were saying that this is the perfect time to really push back because of all the chaos and the regime particularly dear leader is not able to get control of all the chaos. They said this is the perfect time to fight back and save the democracy. That article was posted on substack today titled "Juggling Toward Collapse". I highly recommend it.
His retribution campaign is in full swing. He’s trying to use the Comey’s as an example of what could happen to any of us if we say or do anything that goes against him. It’s an attack on our 1st Amendment rights.
Jack the absolute insanity of this indictment over the posting of seashells, when Matt Gaetz, in the past,texted about “86-ing” McConnell, McCarthy, etc., shows the extreme hypocrisy of this entire regime…”do as I say, not as I do” attitude is beyond belief and absolutely nauseating! This indictment is a high profile “audition” by Blanche,in who desperately wants to be the next AG, who declared his “love” of Donald Trump, and now in the role of Acting AG is still behaving as Trump’s personal attorney, not the Peoples Attorney, which is what the position of Attorney General of the United States is…FOR THE PEOPLE! I also heard earlier that the “audience of one” demanded an arrest warrant for Comey, that he be handcuffed and perp walked in front of cameras, to embarrass James Comey…which is exactly what this is all about…destroying Comey’s good name and credibility, something Trump has never had! The Revenge and Retribution regime must be brought to heel, the incompetent, insanity of the man sitting in the Oval Office must be stopped, either through the 25th Amendment, or Impeachment!! This country and the world cannot endure much more!!!
To be honest, Comey lost my respect when he cost Hillary the election by spreading rumors about her email. He has no good name in my book. He is certainly not guilty of the crime he is being indicted for.
Forget George III. This mad king is reaching back to that original fat syphilitic tyrant Henry VIII, when treason law stopped being a shield for the realm and became the king’s favorite hunting weapon.
In Henry’s last years, nobles and counselors who had spent a lifetime in service discovered that past proximity to the throne was now incriminating evidence; the line between “loyal subject” and “head on a pike” was whatever the king woke up feeling that morning.
We're seeing an American translation of that same move: Trumpy's former criminal defense lawyer acting as prosecutor-in‑chief telling us his boss has the right to order prosecutions of enemies, and then tests that theory on an Instagram photo of seashells. It seems that absurdity is the point, but irony is lost on these assholes.
Henry’s Treasons Act logic in modern drag. I think of how Guy Fawkes planned to blow up Parliament, but Americans have a much shorter fuse We are not going to take this much longer.
Jack, since I am lazy and you provably know, I have known of the 86 designation for sixty or more years. To me, as far as I understand every other person with common sense at the very least equate 86 with being thrown out of an establishment "and don't come back." Never until trump was it criminalized, that I know of. Yes or no?
The DOJ is the most formidable prosecution organization in the country because it was careful to bring only cases it was sure it could win. Didn’t always work out, but it did most of the time. Another year of this behavior, however, will complete the destruction of that reputation. Government lawyers have started acting like ambulance chasers, and judges have taken notice. The DOJ won’t hold the reputation it depends on for much longer, and will have to work much harder at scaring people.
The seashells scenario is being repeated in my mind as a way to keep the “TDS assassins wanting to do away with the president” narrative in the mainstream media for the present news cycle. This is a nothing burger as far as it is an invalid prosecution (again.) The administration is on their “Repeat…Rinse…Refile” cycle. Distraction from all the present distractions of war, economy, crime, grifting, ballrooms, and EPSTEIN.
#HoldFast
CC...you've put your finger on something most readers miss entirely.
The seashell case is doing two jobs simultaneously...keeping the "deranged Comey threatened the President" frame alive...in cable chyrons...and...burning bandwidth that would otherwise be spent...on the genuinely damaging stories.
Epstein especially.
EVERY news cycle the Comey indictment dominates...is a news cycle the Melania-Ungaro-Epstein thread...the ballroom grift...and the war drift do NOT.
The "Repeat, Rinse, Refile" rhythm you're describing...is the ACTUAL mechanism.
They do NOT need the prosecution to succeed. They need it to OCCUPY the slot. That is the whole point. Thanks for being one of the readers who can see what the noise is for.
#HoldFast
-Jack
I’d like to know how much these “revenge” prosecutions are costing taxpayers? If they’re thrown out, can the person being prosecuted file a frivolous prosecution lawsuit?
BG...great question...and...one nobody in the corporate press is asking with any rigor.
Direct prosecution costs...prosecutor salaries...FBI agent hours...grand jury proceedings... expert witnesses...typically run into the millions for a federal case of this complexity...and...the defendant almost NEVER recovers their own legal fees.
The Hyde Amendment...passed in 1997...technically allows a defendant to recover attorney's fees...IF the prosecution was "vexatious, frivolous, or in bad faith,"...but...the bar is brutally high...and...procedural dismissals like the Halligan ruling...don't qualify.
As for civil suits... yeah...federal prosecutors enjoy absolute immunity for prosecutorial decisions...which is one of the reasons this ENTIRE playbook is so attractive to the people running it.
The accountability mechanisms exist on paper...BUT...were not designed for a coordinated political prosecution campaign. That gap...is part of the story.
-Jack
File the date: April 28, 2026. A federal grand jury indicted a former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the second time in seven months — the first attempt having collapsed when the unlawfully appointed prosecutor’s indictment was thrown out by a federal judge. The new charge: a photograph of shells on a beach. The man who brought it: Todd Blanche, the president’s former personal criminal defense attorney, now Acting Attorney General, who upon taking the role stated that the president has the “right” to order prosecutions of his political adversaries. Note the word he chose. Not the authority. Not the discretion. The right. The Founders built a wall between the executive and the prosecutorial specifically because they had watched what happened in regimes where that wall did not exist. They had lived it. Note which wall is being taken down brick by brick.
Jack is correct that the conviction was never the point. Note what First Amendment scholars and career prosecutors said within hours of the indictment — that this case cannot survive a motion to dismiss, that the constitutional bar under Counterman v. Colorado requires proof of the speaker’s actual state of mind, that the theory is legally absurd. The administration knows. Regimes that use law as a weapon require absurd charges — the absurdity is not a flaw in the plan, it is the demonstration. It says: we can do this to anyone. Comey is not the story. Comey is the signal. Watch the calendar. Watch the names that come next.
#HoldFast
Jane...you've taken the analysis and extended it past where I left off...the Founders point... in particular...is the part most readers will not arrive at on their own.
They built the wall...because they had lived it.
That is the line that should be on the wall of EVERY civics classroom in the country right now.
Your read...on the absurdity is EXACTLY correct...the absurdity is not a bug...it's the demonstration.
"We can do this to anyone." THAT...is the message the seashell indictment is sending... and you've named it cleanly.
Thank you for reading this carefully, Jane. Readers like you are why I do this work.
#HoldFast
-Jack
Thank you Jack, Why did the DOJ go to North Carolina for an indictment? Duty calls, I’ll finish your article later.
Joan...Comey owns a beach house in the Eastern District of North Carolina...where the seashell photo was reportedly taken.
That gave DOJ the jurisdictional hook to file OUTSIDE the Eastern District of Virginia... where the first indictment collapsed.
Classic venue-shopping. Take care of duty...the article will be there when you get back.
#HoldFast
-Jack
Thank you Jack I didn’t know Comey owned a beach house, it must be beautiful by the ocean. I’m happy for him and his family to have a house there.
Great analysis Jack. I certainly can guess why? Remembering the Jack Smith hearing and a Republican showed a list of (don’t recall if he said political enemies or not) Americans to be prosecuted, didn’t finish all the names. For what doing there job of Truth/Facts? Besides that Biden and his daughter or granddaughter is on that list.
1st Amendment rights are still under attack for anyone that doesn’t threaten anyone (hateful rhetoric from the WH name calling etc using Truth Social and far right X threatens others) yet MAGA can threaten, get away with it and continues to threaten Americans (like Jeffries/Democrats in Congress or anyone in general) for speaking the Truth.
Truth/Facts matter, Rule of law matters, Righting the Wrong in Court matters, Justice matters, Our Democracy matters more, our Constitution matters, our Rights and our Freedoms and our Lives matter. Just needed to vent, Enough said for now. Except acting DOJ was not confirmed in the Senate and didn’t take the Oath either.
Joan...vent away.
You're remembering correctly...Rep. Raskin read from an enemies list circulated in MAGA circles...with Biden family members on it...alongside career prosecutors...and journalists.
The asymmetry...you're naming is the heart of it. One side gets prosecuted for a seashell photo. The other...calls sitting members of Congress TAITORS...with no consequence.
THAT... is the definition of a politicized justice system.
Your point about Blanche's confirmation status is sharp...almost NO ONE is covering it.
The list you closed with...is the ACTUAL stack of things at stake.
Naming it OUT LOUD... is itself...an act of resistance.
#HoldFast
-Jack
I’m humbled and grateful for your response and support it means a lot to me. Sharing something with you that my late Auntie told me before she passed away before Thanksgiving 2017. I would be a good teacher or lawyer. That was on my bucket list instead defending our Nation was my highest priority at the time and continues. She knew I was on Twitter and said be sure to tell the truth. I will I replied. I’ll share more later but it’s been a day. Thank you again Jack
#Holdfast
Every day, in every way, this regime turns to the dark side. And to think the executive order to use firing squads, well. Here's hoping the Judiciary is going to be #HoldingFast
Roberta...you're seeing it clearly.
The firing squad executive order is a signal future historians will circle in red ink.
The judiciary is...right now...the load-bearing wall of the republic.
Federal judges...are doing the work Congress has ABDICATED.
Watch which judges get attacked...threatened...or pulled off cases. As long as the bench holds...the COUNTRY holds.
#HoldFast
-Jack
Intimidation, threatening, is this the last gasp of a gang of thugs? Sure hope so. #HoldingFast because I did not give years of my life moving around the world with my Air Force husband to let these thugs win.
Combined with warehousing thousands of innocent people, and more
"efficient " ways of executing people (gas, firing squad)😡, it looks like a plan for DEPORTING LESS immigrants.
ICE is CONTINUING TO BUY WAREHOUSES.
For MORE than 70,000 prisoners??
😡😠🗽🇺🇲🇺🇦
So far, they haven’t managed to get a single one of those warehouses opened though. States and local authorities and citizens are pushing back. Most Americans do not want this. Rachel Maddow did a piece on it.. a video. Probably on YouTube. I posted or reposted it (forget which) on Threads.
Agree.
This is another way to get the distraction from the war, price of gas at $8/gallon in some parts of the country and diesel will be even more. The war is not going as planned and the under 30 aged group now has a -46% rating of this president and his administration. They had been much earlier +50% for him. I was reading the the Steady State and they were saying that this is the perfect time to really push back because of all the chaos and the regime particularly dear leader is not able to get control of all the chaos. They said this is the perfect time to fight back and save the democracy. That article was posted on substack today titled "Juggling Toward Collapse". I highly recommend it.
#HOLDFAST
Teri
Oh, fer cryin’ out loud.
I just read it. 🙌🏽
Talk about a shell game…🙄
His retribution campaign is in full swing. He’s trying to use the Comey’s as an example of what could happen to any of us if we say or do anything that goes against him. It’s an attack on our 1st Amendment rights.
Jack the absolute insanity of this indictment over the posting of seashells, when Matt Gaetz, in the past,texted about “86-ing” McConnell, McCarthy, etc., shows the extreme hypocrisy of this entire regime…”do as I say, not as I do” attitude is beyond belief and absolutely nauseating! This indictment is a high profile “audition” by Blanche,in who desperately wants to be the next AG, who declared his “love” of Donald Trump, and now in the role of Acting AG is still behaving as Trump’s personal attorney, not the Peoples Attorney, which is what the position of Attorney General of the United States is…FOR THE PEOPLE! I also heard earlier that the “audience of one” demanded an arrest warrant for Comey, that he be handcuffed and perp walked in front of cameras, to embarrass James Comey…which is exactly what this is all about…destroying Comey’s good name and credibility, something Trump has never had! The Revenge and Retribution regime must be brought to heel, the incompetent, insanity of the man sitting in the Oval Office must be stopped, either through the 25th Amendment, or Impeachment!! This country and the world cannot endure much more!!!
To be honest, Comey lost my respect when he cost Hillary the election by spreading rumors about her email. He has no good name in my book. He is certainly not guilty of the crime he is being indicted for.
Forget George III. This mad king is reaching back to that original fat syphilitic tyrant Henry VIII, when treason law stopped being a shield for the realm and became the king’s favorite hunting weapon.
In Henry’s last years, nobles and counselors who had spent a lifetime in service discovered that past proximity to the throne was now incriminating evidence; the line between “loyal subject” and “head on a pike” was whatever the king woke up feeling that morning.
We're seeing an American translation of that same move: Trumpy's former criminal defense lawyer acting as prosecutor-in‑chief telling us his boss has the right to order prosecutions of enemies, and then tests that theory on an Instagram photo of seashells. It seems that absurdity is the point, but irony is lost on these assholes.
Henry’s Treasons Act logic in modern drag. I think of how Guy Fawkes planned to blow up Parliament, but Americans have a much shorter fuse We are not going to take this much longer.
🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬💪
Jack, since I am lazy and you provably know, I have known of the 86 designation for sixty or more years. To me, as far as I understand every other person with common sense at the very least equate 86 with being thrown out of an establishment "and don't come back." Never until trump was it criminalized, that I know of. Yes or no?
The DOJ is the most formidable prosecution organization in the country because it was careful to bring only cases it was sure it could win. Didn’t always work out, but it did most of the time. Another year of this behavior, however, will complete the destruction of that reputation. Government lawyers have started acting like ambulance chasers, and judges have taken notice. The DOJ won’t hold the reputation it depends on for much longer, and will have to work much harder at scaring people.
patel IS on thin ice with trump...
So they try to distract by indicating Comey..yet again!
He collected seashells by the seashore. Trump is terrified of sea shells but laughed about the WHCD events.