Todd Blanche's Kayfabe Comey Case

Merrily we troll along.

Todd Blanche is pretending to prosecute James Comey for threatening the president … but he’s not pretending very hard.

Yesterday the Acting Attorney General sat down for a chat with Meet the Press’s Kristen Welker. Like his predecessor, he knows his main job is going on television — although his schtick involves the wide-eyed affectation of sincerity, rather than indignant tirades. He didn’t mention the Dow even once!

Naturally, Blanche was asked about the indictment of the former FBI Director for posting a picture of seashells arranged to form the number “8647.”

“How does that image of seashells amount to a serious threat against the president's life?” wondered the host.

Blanche insisted that the indictment was the culmination of a long, careful investigation by “career” law enforcement. They’ve been combing that beach for months looking for clues!

“Rest assured that the career assistant United States attorneys in North Carolina, the career FBI agents, the career secret service agents that investigated this case didn't just look at the Instagram post and walk away. That's why you saw an indictment last week, notwithstanding the fact that it was last May that the post was made,” he said, cocking his head like a vice principal explaining that the dress code isn’t sexist, it’s about respect.

In fact, the only line attorney willing to put his name on this POS indictment was Matthew Petracca, whose prior experience was mainly in state Medicaid fraud. His signature will presumably save the case from going the way of Comey’s previous indictment, which was dismissed because Lindsey Halligan was never lawfully appointed as US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. Petracca’s boss W. Ellis Boyle has stuck around calling himself US Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, despite the expiration of his 120-day interim appointment and his failure to win Senate confirmation.

Pressed as to what kind of evidence prosecutors could have other than the image, and Comey’s immediate retraction and repudiation of violence, Blanche practically tapped the side of his nose.

“We are talking about evidence of all sorts. And that means documents, that means witnesses and that means, that means the whole array of what we did,” he simpered.

This is a gambler who knows he’ll never have to lay his cards on the table. Sooner or later — and probably sooner — the cops are going to bust in and confiscate the chips. Just like the last time the DOJ indicted Comey, a court will dismiss this dog of a case long before it gets to a jury. And so Blanche is free to say absolutely anything without worry that it will jeopardize the prosecution.

Well, not anything. He’s not an idiot like FBI Director Kash Patel, flapping his yap about the presentation to the grand jury. Todd Blanche does understand that grand jury secrecy under Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure is actually kind of mandatory.

But if he ever thought this case was going to trial, Blanche wouldn’t concede that lots of people post “8647” online and don’t get arrested for threatening to kill the president.

“That phrase is used constantly,” he admitted. “There are constantly men and women who choose to make threatening statements against President Trump. Every one of those statements do not result in indictments, of course.”

If this were a real case, the head of the Justice Department wouldn’t be on national television explaining that no one else in a comparable situation is getting charged. Blanche is an experienced criminal lawyer — he knows this clip will be Exhibit A in Comey’s motion to dismiss for selective and vindictive prosecution. At this point, you have to assume this whole thing is part of a troll.

It’s not clear whether Alina Habba is in on the joke, though. She spent a few months LARP-ing as US Attorney for New Jersey, but her prosecutorial experience is effectively nil. It’s entirely possible that she didn’t intentionally undermine the Comey indictment on “The View” last week. Maybe she did it out of sheer incompetence.

“A gentleman posted that about me. He posted on Twitter ‘86 Habba’ and he was also charged,” she huffed, as the audience laughed at her claim that the DOJ “brings real cases.”

In fact, Florida man Salvatore Russotto did tweet out his wish to“86” Habba, along with Senator Chuck Schumer, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Joe Biden, Jim Comey, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Canada, “all demonRATS,” and Black people. He wished “a slow and painful death” on both Comey and Habba, and “A VERY PAINFUL DEATH” for former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino. In the event, he was only indicted for threatening Habba — and it didn’t take 11 months to investigate.

Blanche’s argument is essentially “trust us, we’re the DOJ.” In the same appearance where he insisted that Americans have to show ID to eat in a restaurant, the Acting AG promised to share the fruits of a supposedly meticulous investigation which has been underway for almost a year. In reality, Pam Bondi looked at this case and tossed the rancid crustacean carcasses back into the water. MSNOW reports that the case was on indefinite hold until Bondi got fired, at which point Blanche demanded that someone bring him Comey’s head.

It takes serious chutzpah to defend this blatant lawlessness by relying on the institutional credibility of the very agency you’re destroying. But once you get used to lying on national television for a living, selling out the profession is all in a day’s work.