Jailing James Comey

The last thing the administration should do is arrest James B. Comey over his reckless social media posts. A review of the former FBI director’s destructive tenure during President Trump’s first term would provide more appropriate fodder for investigative scrutiny.

Mr. Comey just happened to find the need to put himself in the spotlight mere days before the third novel in his “legal thriller” series went on sale. The erstwhile G-man collected a bunch of seashells and arranged them on the sand to spell out “86 47” and shared them in an Instagram photo under the caption, “cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

The number 86 means “get rid of” and 47 refers to the 47th president, Mr. Trump, but Mr. Comey pleaded ignorance. “I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,” he wrote.

One can say many things about Mr. Comey, but he’s not dumb. He’s intentionally stirring trouble to provoke an administration overreaction, knowing the system will always step up and protect him.

Not everyone has that luxury. Days after Joseph R. Biden was sworn in as president, the Justice Department arrested Douglass Mackey over a silly image he posted on Twitter during Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2016 election bid.

Democratic prosecutors employed a tortured interpretation of a law meant to stop Klansmen from blocking access to voting booths to criminalize Mr. Mackey’s comic illustration that said, “Vote from home. Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925.”

That’s it. That was all he did, yet a jury in an overwhelmingly left-leaning jurisdiction convicted him, absent evidence that the photo swayed a single voter. That was Democratic lawfare at work, and it’s not something Republicans ought to replicate now.

Mr. Comey might disagree with that conclusion. Appearing on London Times Radio last June, he characterized social media threats as something warranting “serious” attention, at least when they involve his ideological opponents.

“The language of threat and sort of the keyboard threat of violence is just part of MAGA world, part of Trump’s world. There is significant risk that threats will continue to be aimed at individual public servants and that disturbed individuals will act on those threats and harm … elected officials. That is a very serious thing and has to be taken seriously.”

In a second interview in September, he clarified by saying, “There still is a significant chance of individual violence motivated by the language in a lot of our public discourse that reaches warped souls.”

Two presidential assassination attempts, one very nearly successful, came from souls warped by the left, not “MAGA world.” That still doesn’t mean Mr. Comey should be jailed over a photograph.

As FBI Director Kash Patel hinted during an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News, documents coming within “a week or two” will shed light on potential criminal misconduct at the bureau on Mr. Comey’s watch related to the Russia collusion hoax.

Secret Service agents came knocking at Mr. Comey’s door. They had a chat with him, just like they do with every nutcase who makes threatening remarks about the commander in chief.

In any official inquiry, Mr. Comey should be forced to answer for his conduct as FBI director. He doesn’t deserve to be made into a martyr for free speech.

— The Washington Times