“Rest Assured”: Blanche is Bluffing in the Comey Case
He has overpromised, and he will underdeliver.
Every young federal prosecutor gets the same lecture early in their career, at a week-long training session for new hires—“baby prosecutors’ school,” as it’s known—and then again from their supervisors before their first jury trial. A maxim is drummed into their head: underpromise and overdeliver.
When you stand up with an opening argument to a jury, don’t boast. Give them the basics. Tell them what the evidence will show, cleanly and without flourish, then step back and let the evidence do the work. That’s it.
The rule takes full advantage of what should be a built-in edge for the prosecution in the typical case. Prosecutors have the great advantage of choosing which cases to bring. They have a built-in filter to ensure the strength of the cases, and thus the ability to undersell. That filter is the Principles of Federal Prosecution, which require that no case be brought unless the evidence establishes guilt and a conviction is probable. Both conclusions are required: you must have the goods, and you must be able to conclude that a jury will likely convict beyond a reasonable doubt.
If you’ve done your job before indicting, as the rules demand, then you already know the evidence is very likely to carry you. And if you haven’t, a supervisor will make sure that you go back to the drawing board. That’s the reason—as opposed to any inherent superiority in lawyering—that the great majority of federal prosecutions succeed.
For the same reason, a restrained opening is wise strategy. The credibility you build across a trial, by delivering even more than what you promised in the opening, is a tailwind that powers the jury deliberations.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche once lived by that axiom and taught it to younger attorneys during his eight-year tenure in the Southern District of New York, including a stint as co-chief of its violent crimes division.
As with every other aspect of the norms and best practices of the Department of Justice, Blanche, consumed by a desire to impress the president, has turned the standard to underpromise and overdeliver on its head.
In the current, second indictment of former FBI Director James Comey—this one based on a photo Comey posted to Instagram in May 2025, depicting seashells arranged on a beach to spell out “86 47”—Blanche has now overpromised. And you can bet that he is going to underdeliver.
I have already laid out in detail why this indictment is vaporous and destined to go nowhere. The government will have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Comey knowingly and willfully threatened the president’s life, and the charging document offers nothing on that score. The actual record runs entirely the other way. The absence of intent evidence is the huge hole at the center of the indictment.
The facts also sharply undercut the claim that both Blanche and Kash Patel made at the press conference announcing the indictment: that the charges were the product of a lengthy, painstaking investigation. Every fact necessary to evaluate this case was on the table within forty-eight hours of the original post back in 2025. The indictment added nothing to that picture.
The strong inference, in my view, is that the intervening months were not spent developing evidence; they were spent waiting for the right moment and the right acting attorney general.
Since becoming Acting Attorney General, Blanche has been on a PR binge. He is a regular presence on the Sunday shows, not a typical venue for a sitting Attorney General. He made three appearances on April 26 alone, largely consumed by the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting. Then, a few days after announcing the second Comey indictment, at a nationally televised press conference, he appeared on Meet the Press on May 3 to sell it.
He fielded a very predictable series of questions from host Kristen Welker. Welker pointed out that in the wake of the indictment, the phrase “86 47” was everywhere: on numerous Amazon products, on T-shirts, in social media posts by the thousands. Was the DOJ coming for all of them? And how exactly does the government prove that Comey intended a threat when he deleted the post the same day and told federal agents on the record that he never associated the numbers with violence?
Blanche’s answers were a combination of bluff and fluff. Asked how the government would prove intent, his response was “witnesses,” “documents,” and “materials.” That clears it up. Blanche followed with the empty assertion that “the evidence was presented to the Grand Jury,” which, of course, is true of any indictment, and scarcely a demonstration of the charge’s bona fides. And it doesn’t begin to explain why the Grand Jury (or, in fact, the assistant who drafted the indictment for the Grand Jury’s consideration) declined to include the supposed killer evidence of the most crucial element.
Then Blanche became even more slippery. When Welker asked whether the seashells were at the root of the indictment, he couldn’t even give a straight answer to that. He retreated, repeatedly, to the same assertion: that career prosecutors, career FBI agents, and career Secret Service agents had conducted a thorough, months-long investigation, and that there was a body of “evidence of all sorts” far beyond a single beach photograph.
Rest assured, he said. Twice.
Blanche’s assurances beg the question: if the Department developed ample evidence over the months since Comey posted the picture, why is none of it in the charging document? An indictment needn’t lay out all your evidence, but at a bare minimum, it should sustain the charge on its face.
The Department has proffered no evidence whatsoever about the core, pivotal point—Comey’s intent—that could convert a photograph of seashells into a threat to the president. In fact, the indictment is already ripe for a bill of particulars: a formal demand by the defense that the government specify the facts underlying its charges. It’s a motion that says, in essence: you’ve told us what you claim happened, now tell us why you think it’s a crime. With formal charges this threadbare, the government’s answer to that motion will be very revealing.
If Blanche had months of evidence beyond the photograph, it would be in the indictment. You don’t leave your best facts on the floor when you’re trying to secure a charge. The absence of anything beyond the photograph isn’t a prosecutorial judgment call. It’s a tell.
Blanche has told the public, under the bright lights of a Sunday morning news program, that there is far more to this case than a picture of seashells. We must hold him to that, just as would a jury. When it’s time to turn over the cards, and he’s holding a six and a seven, don’t let him pretend he never promised a high pair.
Young AUSAs are taught that the moment you overpromise, you’ve handed the defense its closing argument. Here it would go something like this: “You heard Mr. Blanche promise that he would present evidence developed over a long investigation proving that Jim Comey threatened the president. Rest assured, he said, not once but twice. When you go back to the jury room to deliberate, remember that promise.”
Blanche’s servility is all the more rankling to his former colleagues because he knows better. Once upon a time, he upheld the traditions of the Department of Justice, to which he now lays waste weekly. His empty salesmanship of the Comey indictment is a case study in what federal prosecutors are taught not to do. But then, just about everything Todd Blanche now does is what not long ago DOJ prosecutors were told not to do.
Talk to you later.
BLANCHE. A worthy successor to Bad Bondi. Facts be damned. But since he seems to run his press appearances so that they will air favorably on FOX, one can understand that a lack of substance is no bar to braggadocio. What I think is such a shame is that he daily pulls down and demeans the credibility and best practices of the DOJ. He's doing real and perhaps irreparable harm.
HL: "Once upon a time, he upheld the traditions of the Department of Justice, to which he now lays waste weekly. His empty salesmanship of the Comey indictment is a case study in what federal prosecutors are taught not to do. "
Blanche’s PR outings frequently torpedo his own cases (remember when he boasted about his malicious motive for prosecuting Abrego Garcia?). In his latest TV appearances, he admitted that there were many instances of 86 47 being displayed, but that Comey’s was the only one he intended to prosecute.