The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Comey Joins Long Line of Lying Left-Wing FBI Officials

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

Former FBI Director James Comey is under the microscope again, this time hiding behind a ridiculous "seashell" defense after allegedly posting a veiled threat against Donald Trump. While the legacy media rushes to dismiss the "86/47" beach message as a harmless coincidence, Comey’s long record of selective amnesia and partisan leaks tells a much darker story. From orchestrating the Russia collusion hoax to shielding Hillary Clinton's illegal homebrew servers, this latest stunt highlights the sheer arrogance of a thoroughly weaponized justice system.  It is past time to hold the architects of the Deep State accountable for years of lying to Congress and betraying the American people, argues Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” 👉 The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: http://dailysignal.com/donate 👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest short videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠  Also on Spotify: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9753340027  👉Want more VDH? Watch Victor’s weekly, hour-long podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” now! Subscribe to his YouTube channel, and enable notifications:  https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273?sub_confirmation=1👉More exclusive content is available on Victor’s website: https://victorhanson.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for The Daily Signal. James Comey, the former director of the FBI, was again indicted recently. This time for putting on his social media a picture of seashells that were arranged to convey a message threatening Donald Trump. And the message was 8647. In other words, however you define 86. I grew up in the 1960s and 70s where the term was used to eject somebody from a bar. But over the ensuing decades, people had used it in an eliminationist fashion. The mafia'd get rid of somebody, 86M, killed them.

But here's the problem. James Comey says that he was just walking along the beach, and he happened to see this message, and he didn't quite know what it meant. Why would he put something on social media if he didn't know what it meant? And how in the world would the FBI director, who's supposed to be all knowledgeable, of all the terms that gangsters use or bars use, this comes with the field. And he claims he didn't know what he was doing. But why would he do it in the first place? More importantly, we have had three assassination attempts of Donald Trump.

So when you look at the case ostensibly, you say, well, what's so wrong in the free speech America just putting out a seashell message? Well, nothing is wrong if that's what it was, but we don't know what it was. In other words, we don't know to what degree he might have made the message or he deliberately wanted to convey a message in a climate in which the President of the United States is in constant jeopardy of being shot. and he was the former FBI director. Now, most of our legal eagles, even left and right, agree that it's a weak case in the First Amendment under the First Amendment will be thrown out. But there's another wrinkle to it.

And that is, we were told this was a week's, even a month-long investigation. A sensibly, it didn't take any time to investigate a seashell photo. All you do is look at it. Maybe you talk to his family or whatever. and there's the evidence. But it seems as if they were subpoenaed personal tweets, I don't know, correspondence with his family and friends. The point of all that apparently is the DOJ is trying to see if he contextualized what he was doing.

If he said something like, this is neat, I threaten the president with a vicarious method that kind of exculpates me, but it still gets the message. I don't know if that happened, but there's something more to the case because I don't think otherwise they would have brought it. Finally, this particular case may not go to trial. It may or may not, depending what the investigation has found. But it's in a larger context. It's really disturbing. Remember that he went before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committee,

and he testified about all the aspects of the Russian collusion. case and all the misadventures of the FBI. On 245 occasions, James Comey said, I don't know. I don't remember. I can't think of anything. In other words, he deliberately stonewalled a congressional investigation while he was under oath. If any of you listening were to have,

I don't know, not reported $10,000 and the IRS asked you about the condition of how you earned it, and you said, I don't know, I can't remember, I don't think that would last very long. In addition to that, you remember that he had a private conversation shortly before he was fired with the President of the United States. After that conversation was over, in which he claims that Donald Trump said, go easy on former national security designate Michael Flynn, and Trump says he's explicitly asked. ask him if Trump himself was the object of an investigation, which we know he was, and Comey had

assured him that he was not. Comey went out and on an FBI pad, he memorialized that, at least his version. And then he deliberately took a third-party friend and gave him that message, that description of the conversation with the sole intent to leak it to the New York Times. And then when the Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, looked at that, he claimed that a private conversation with the President of the United States covering some of the most intimate matters of governance was not classified. He said it was confidential. And so there were never any indictments lodged against James Comey for on 245 occasions not telling the truth, leaking what should have been a classification. document that the government owned and he took out himself. He did not put it in the FBI

filing system. He took it, as he said, kind of an insurance policy and then he deliberately leaked it to the New York Times. I could add a couple of epilogues to the James Comey story. In addition to all this, you've got to remember that he was the architect of Operation Crossfire Hurricane. The FBI hired Christopher Steele as a contract. and paid him money, even though they, even according to the testimony of FBI investigators, they could not corroborate much or most of the Christopher Steele dossier. They couldn't. And yet they used that, that dossier by the testimony of Andrew McCabe, Comey's successor,

they used that dossier to get FISA warrants against U.S. citizens. an erroneous document was used to what, confuse the judge as if there really was some type of Russian collusion, and therefore they had a right to spy on people like Carter Page. And then we get back to the 2016 election when Hillary Clinton used a private home brood's server against the law to do that. If your Secretary of State might have been a misdemeanor, might have been a felony, depending on how it was interpreted. Number two, her husband, Bill Clinton, met the Attorney General of the United States, Loretta Lynch, kind of on an accidental private plane rendezvous at the Phoenix airport,

right in the middle of this investigation of Bill Clinton's wife. Then we also learned that when these emails were subpoenaed, they were destroyed by Hillary Clinton and the servers themselves were disdive. destroyed. And Comey, and this is very interesting, Comy was the director of the FBI. He was not the Attorney General, but he took on the role of both FBI director-investigator and Department of Justice prosecutor to adjudicate himself. In other words, he presents evidence to the Attorney General who then adjudicates whether it's worthy to go to trial, and that person was James Comey. And of course, he said that while Hillary had broken the law, no normal prosecutor would have furthered the case

and brought her an indictment. What am I getting at? I don't know to the degree which the DOJ will be able to file an indictment that sticks and will have an actual trial. But that said, what James Comey did to the FBI in numerous occasions was a betrayal of his office and a betrayal of the United States. And just to finish, he was not an isolated case. Robert Mueller, his predecessor, testified before the House Committee and said he did not know much at all about the steel dossier. The steel dossier was the sole catalyst that prompted his appointment as special counsel.

He set under oath he didn't even know much about it. Couldn't talk about it. I just mentioned his successor, James Comey, James Comey's successor, interim chief of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, on four occasions, lied, two of them under oath to federal investigators. He lied about leaking material about an investigation. And finally, Christopher Ray, the fourth FBI director in succession. He didn't tell us the complete truth about the role

of the FBI on January 6th in the aftermath, the role and the number of FBI informants who were there on January 6th, the exact role of the FBI surveilling traditional Catholics. He said it was an isolated case. It was not. And he didn't tell us why the FBI was going to school board meetings likely on the prompt of, to monitor parents on the prompt of teachers unions. So we've had a miserable, despicable record of four FBI directors in succession that have either lied to Congress or broken the law or lied to investigators or haven't come full and told the truth to a congressional committee under oath. And so whatever we find out with James Comey, he's got a lot of culpability, moral, if not legal. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis-Henson for the Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal.

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