On Aug. 25, the Department of Justice filed its papers defending its decision to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey for posting a picture of seashells arranged to spell out "8647."

That's right. A picture of seashells.

"There is no serious dispute that an objective viewer of Comey's post could read it to mean 'Kill President Trump,'" the department wrote in its brief.

When I was bartending my way through law school, to "86" a patron meant to cut him off — from drinking, not life support. In the Merriam-Webster dictionary used by the Associated Press, the entry for "86" says its meaning is "to throw out," "to get rid of" or "to refuse service to." Trump is the 47th president.

If you go to Amazon and type in the numbers 8647, you get page after page of merchandise, T-shirts in every color and style, garden flags and decals and mugs and endless varieties of hats — you name it, someone makes it with an 8647 on it.

Are all of these merchants, all of these buyers, all of these advertisements, all of these products threatening to kill President Trump?

There is only one reason James Comey is being prosecuted for free speech. It is not because he was a threat to the president's life. It's because he had the audacity, as the FBI director, to investigate ties between Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. Trump fired him as FBI director in 2017 and has called for him to be jailed ever since. An earlier effort to prosecute him fell apart, so here they go again.

The irony of Trump's hatred of Comey is that my friends from Hillary-land blame the same James Comey for handing the 2016 election to Trump by his last-minute moves on Hillary's private server in the closing days of the campaign.

If you want real power, I used to tell my students, go be a prosecutor. Prosecutors literally exercise life-and-death powers, and everything in between. That's because they have almost — almost — unreviewable power to decide who to charge and what to charge them with. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might still need to get an indictment from a grand jury, but the old joke used to be that a good prosecutor could convince a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. And most judges, most of the time, uphold prosecutorial discretion and are inclined to trust what the government says and does because, at least in theory, they are in the business of pursuing justice.

The Trump administration is rewriting the rules. This administration's vindictive approach to governing, which includes going after the Comeys of the world for crossing the president's path, has put prosecutors in the position of defending the indefensible. James Comey a threat to the president's life? Why should a judge believe anything these prosecutors say? Even their own brief suggests that Comey was trying to get attention for a novel he wrote titled "FDR Drive," in which a prosecutor pursues a far-right social media personality. How that connects to a threat to Trump, I'm not sure, but in any event, it runs smack into the First Amendment. Again.

Grand jurors, regular jurors and especially judges must guard against the prosecutorial indiscretions that are sadly becoming increasingly routine — whether as part of the immigration crackdown, the pursuit of leaks to the press or the pursuit of the president's investigators of the past.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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