Retired judge and former Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano criticized the Trump administration’s “frivolous” indictment of former FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday, describing it as a blatant “political vendetta” and predicting that the case would soon be tossed out.

During a discussion about the indictment on Newsmax’s Wake Up America, Napolitano said:

I don’t think it matters that there’s a relatively conservative jury base here because I don’t think this case will ever see a jury. There’s no crime here under several Supreme Court opinions, one of which says if there’s a passage of time between the alleged threat and any harm caused, that dissipates the threat, and it also gives the person threatened the opportunity to challenge it. State it differently, if this were a real threat to the president of the United States, Comey would have been charged a year-and-a-half ago. But the more important legal principle is free speech. If there is any non-criminal interpretation of the speech, that trumps – no pun intended, lowercase T – that trumps the criminal aspect. So are there other meanings to ’86 47′ besides ‘I want to kill the president’?

After Newsmax co-host Sharla McBride argued, “No. I don’t think there are, right?” co-host and former Trump special assistant Marc Lotter pointed out that the term was “also used in diners to cancel an order.”

“Right. 86 could mean cancel the presidency,” Napolitano noted. “As long as there is a non-criminal interpretation of this, it’s protected speech. I think the case is frivolous. I’m not a fan of Comey’s at all, and I’ve never hesitated to criticize him, and we all know what almost happened to the president of the United States the other night and on two dreadful prior occasions. But this is a political vendetta against a political adversary and it shouldn’t be using the Justice Department as a means for that.”

He continued, “I think Comey’s people will move to dismiss it, that it’s protected speech, and I think that motion will be granted,” before predicting, “This is so frivolous that Comey may actually end up getting his legal fees reimbursed by the government.”

Comey was charged with threatening the life of the president this week over an Instagram photo he posted nearly one year ago, which read, “86 47.”

While the number 86 has been used as a code for “to kill” or “execute,” it is also commonly used as slang for “to throw out,” “to get rid of,” or “to refuse service to.”

Watch above via Newsmax.

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