U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a farewell ceremony at the White House on the final day of Britain's King Charles and Queen Camilla's state visit, in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 30, 2026. Samir Hussein/Pool via REUTERS
President Donald Trump's latest revenge target may have his own 14th Amendment violations case, one national security expert wrote on Thursday.
Marcy Wheeler wrote that there is some interesting information in previous Justice Department lawsuits that could help former FBI Director James Comey in his case.
Kash Patel's FBI indicted MAGA Sal Russotto last year for threats he made to Alina Habba, including the "86" term that the DOJ alleges is an assassination threat.
Interestingly, the sentencing documents said that Russotto made similar threats "directed at other individuals and groups, including but not limited to: '86 [Victim 1],' '86 [Victim 2],' '86 [Victim 3],' and '86[Victim 4].'"
Wheeler noticed that when the DOJ filed an exhibit, it listed a number of Democrats were threatened using the "86" language.
During the hearing, the DOJ presented a different version of Russotto’s social media threats that used the "86" language. For the first time, documents showed that Comey was one of those Russotto used "86" with.
"Now I’m assuming that even though Russotto sent several 86 tweets to the then Deputy Director of the FBI, the FBI didn’t interview those victims, which would include Joe Biden," wrote Wheeler. "I assume, too, that the FBI didn’t interview Comey to find out [if] he felt the wave of 86 posts accompanied by much clearer death threats than he sent in a picture of shells were true threats."
Wheeler thinks that the DOJ was using this prosecution to set up the prosecution of Comey. In that case, however, the DOJ used the "proper intent standard for sending threats," which compares desire to objective reasonableness. A "true threat," requires the individual to make a serious expression of intent to commit an act of violence.
"But for most of a year, DOJ knew that Russotto had also issued death threats against Jim Comey, just as a guy named Spaceman Chuck issued threats against Jim Comey in response to events transpiring in his Eastern District of Virginia prosecution. And it wasn’t until the last minute that they admitted these death threats started by targeting Comey, not Habba," wrote Wheeler.
The "Equal Protection Clause" in the 14th Amendment means that if someone is in a similar situation to someone else — like being a student or a job applicant — states must apply the same rules to everyone fairly. Wheeler implies that the law is not being applied equally in these similar "86" cases.