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Blanche Says Others Who Post ‘86 47’ Message Won’t Be Charged Like Comey
Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, on Sunday sought to contrast the Justice Department’s indictment of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey over a social media post with other instances in which people have shared the same message, saying that the department had gathered additional evidence during an 11-month investigation.
Mr. Comey was indicted last week over a photo that he posted on Instagram in May 2025 of seashells on a beach that spelled out “86 47,” which the department characterized as a threat to the president. The charge was the second attempt by the Justice Department under President Trump to prosecute Mr. Comey and the department’s latest effort to pursue charges against the president’s perceived enemies.
Asked on NBC’s “Meet The Press” whether others who displayed the same numbers, or bought or sold T-shirts with the same message, would face the same prosecution, Mr. Blanche said no.
The “86 47” message, Mr. Blanche said, is “posted constantly — that phrase is used constantly.” He added, “Every one of those statements do not result in indictments.” What makes Mr. Comey’s case different, he argued, is other evidence collected, which he said he could not describe.
“Of course the seashells are part of that case,” said Mr. Blanche, who acknowledged that proving Mr. Comey’s intent would be crucial to his prosecution. “You prove intent with witnesses; you prove intent with documents,” he said, adding that there was “a body of evidence” that led to Mr. Comey’s indictment. The three-page indictment, secured on Tuesday, was focused only on the seashell post.
Mr. Comey has insisted he is innocent and will fight the charges. He has said he did not associate the phrase “86” with violence, and pointed to its origins in the restaurant business, where it has for decades been used to refer to removing something from the menu or throwing out an unruly customer.
Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, appeared later on the show and said there was only one thing that distinguished Mr. Comey’s case from other examples of people using the phrase: “the fact that James Comey is a political opponent of the president; it’s the fact that the president has called on him for prosecution; it’s the fact that Todd Blanche wants to keep his job.”
Mr. Schiff called the charges against Mr. Comey “deeply illegitimate” and said he expected the case to be thrown out of court before it ever gets to a jury.
A search and rescue operation is underway in southern Morocco after two U.S. service members were reported missing off the southern coast of the North African nation during annual training exercises.
The training exercise, known as African Lion, ground to a halt Sunday as U.S. and Moroccan assets were redirected to the search and rescue operation, officials told a CBS News crew on the scene.
The soldiers went missing in an accident which was unrelated to the training exercise. The names of the soldiers and further details have not yet been released.
CBS News reporters, embedded with the U.S. military, were in their tents Saturday evening at 9 p.m. local time when a base-wide head-count was conducted. Helicopters were heard throughout the night as the search began, and on Sunday morning, the reporters observed various planes, helicopters and drones in the area around the coast.
African Lion is the largest annual joint military exercise led by AFRICOM, one of the U.S. Department of Defense’s 11 unified combatant commands. The exercise occurs in a vast desert where the Sahara Desert meets the Atlantic Ocean near the Cap Draa Training Area, outside the city of Tan Tan.
The African Lion training exercise brings together thousands of troops from the United States, African partner nations, and NATO allies to train for modern warfare across land, air, sea, cyber, and space domains.
This year’s exercise involves more than 5,000 personnel from over 40 nations, with a growing focus on advanced technologies, including drones, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence.
The authorities said that a driver rammed a car containing multiple explosive devices and propane tanks into an athletic club in Portland, Ore., early on Saturday, leaving behind a complex scene that officials said they were still dismantling more than 12 hours later.
The driver was killed, officials said. The driver’s identity and motive were not immediately known.
The medical examiner’s office has “been unable to determine the identity of this individual because of the risk involved as we continue to clear away other explosive devices,” Chief Bob Day of the Portland Police Bureau said during a news conference on Saturday afternoon.
Portland Fire and Rescue responded to a report that a car had crashed through the front entrance of the Multnomah Athletic Club and caught fire around 3 a.m., according to Terry Foster, a spokesman for the department.
The driver had been slowly driving around the club before ramming the car through its front window, turned right and crashed near several restaurants on the ground floor, according to Cmdr. James Crooker of the Portland Police Bureau.
Employees of the club found the car “engulfed in flames,” Commander Crooker said. No employees of the club were injured, said Mike Benner, a Portland Police Bureau spokesman.
After the fire was under control, emergency responders found a man dead in the car, the authorities said.
Shortly after 4 a.m., the Portland Police Bureau’s Explosive Disposal Unit entered the club and found several incendiary devices and improvised explosive devises inside the car, Sgt. Jim DeFrain, the supervisor of the Metro Explosive Disposal Unit, said during the news conference.
Some of the explosive devices had detonated and caused “significant damage,” Sergeant DeFrain said. Several other explosives had started to go off but did not completely detonate.
Sergeant DeFrain declined to specify the number of explosive devices investigators had found, or what they were.
He said that there had been “three or four times” when his team found a new explosive device it needed to handle, including moments before the news conference, which happened around 3 p.m. local time.
“This is a dirty, dangerous, complex job,” Sergeant DeFrain said. “I’ve been a bomb technician here in the city for over 13 years. This is by far the most complex scene that I’ve ever dealt with.”
The authorities have been using robots to remove the propane tanks and other dangerous materials, he said.
“There is a concern that they could go off if we don’t handle them appropriately,” he said.
The police advised the public to avoid the area near the club, which overlooks Providence Park in Portland’s Goose Hollow neighborhood.
The Multnomah Athletic Club said on social media that it expected a prolonged closure.
Charles Leverton, the general manager of the club, said during the news conference that its community was shaken after the crash.
The facility is among the largest athletic and social clubs in the United States, according to its website. The 600,000-square-foot, eight-floor facility has multiple restaurants, swimming pools, athletic courts and banquet facilities.
The inside of the club was “not as damaged as it could have been,” given the number of explosive devices, Commander Crooker said.
Keith Wilson, the mayor of Portland, said that emergency responders had prevented a “catastrophic event.”
The crash on Saturday came less than a month after another car crash near the club that injured a security guard, Chief Day said. The authorities do not believe the two crashes were related.
Chief Day acknowledged that the crash happened mere hours after “May Day” workers protests in Portland concluded. But he said the crash did not appear to be related to domestic terrorism.
“We feel confident in assuring the community that there are no other threats, that this is isolated,” he said.
Bard College President Leon Botstein speaks during the 153rd Commencement at Bard College, May 25, 2013, in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.
Philip Kamrass/AP
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Philip Kamrass/AP
ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — The longtime president of Bard College announced his retirement Friday, months after it was revealed that he had a much deeper relationship with Jeffrey Epstein than was previously known.
Leon Botstein, who has been president of the small, liberal arts college inn New York for a half century, will retire at the end of June, he wrote in an email provided to The Associated Press by Bard.
In the note, Botstein, 79, didn’t mention the scrutiny of his ties to Epstein, except to say that he had waited to announce his retirement publicly until the completion of an independent review of his relationship with the notorious sex offender.
He said he would remain on Bard’s faculty as a teacher and musician.
Botstein was not accused of any involvement in Epstein’s exploitation and abuse of girls and women. But he was among a long list of prominent and notable men and women who maintained friendly relationships with him for years, despite his status as a convicted sex offender.
A trove of documents released by the U.S. Justice Department this year showed that Botstein and Epstein had met on multiple occasions, with Epstein sometimes arriving at Bard by helicopter. The president had also asked Epstein to be a guest at the 2013 graduation ceremonies and suggested they meet for an opera performance.
In addition, Botstein reached out to Epstein weeks after the The Miami Herald reported new details on Epstein’s criminal prosecution in 2018, saying “I want you to know that I hope you are holding up as well as can be expected,” and had separately referred to his “friendship” with Epstein in at least two emails.
Epstein steered $150,000 to Botstein in 2016, which the president has previously said he donated to the college. Botstein has previously denied having a personal connection with Epstein, instead saying his contacts with Epstein were centered on fundraising for the college.
Bard’s trustees enlisted the outside law firm WilmerHale to conduct an independent review of the communications between Epstein and Botstein. The review found that the president did not do anything illegal but “made decisions in the course of that relationship that reflect on his leadership of Bard,” according to a summary provided by the college.
“In his public statements and his statements to the Bard community, President Botstein minimized and was not fully accurate in describing his relationship with Epstein,” the review said.
At one point, according to the review, Botstein disagreed with a senior faculty member who felt Bard should not engage with Epstein, concluding that the president “relied on his view that a person convicted of crimes involving sex with a minor—’an ordinary sex offender’, in his words—could be presumed to be rehabilitated in the same way that any other convicted person should, in his view, be given that presumption.”
“President Botstein forcefully argues that Bard’s need for funds was paramount. His view was, ‘I would take money from Satan if it permitted me to do God’s work,’ ” the review said.
The Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees at Bard, in a separate message, wrote that it is grateful for Botstein’s decades of service to the college, but added that the “concerns raised in recent months have been serious and deeply felt.”
It said funds associated with Epstein will be directed to organizations that support survivors of sexual harm.
Bard’s media relations office released a statement calling Botstein “a transformative leader with the vision and unwavering commitment that has shaped Bard into the world-class educational institution it is today.”
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