Two minutes. That's how long elapsed between Patrice Comey sending her husband a Google screenshot defining the term "86" and former FBI Director James Comey uploading his now-infamous Instagram photo of seashells arranged to spell out "86 47."

First, what "86 47" actually means. In criminal slang, "86" means to kill or eliminate someone. Trump is the 47th president. Comey captioned the photo "Cool shell formation on my beach walk." Just a guy at the beach. Nothing to decode.

At the time of the post, President Trump had already survived three assassination attempts. A federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted Comey for making a threat against the president. He goes to trial October 21.

The evidence now making headlines didn't come from prosecutors. It came from Comey's own defense team — submitted in a July 28 federal court filing. An FBI search warrant affidavit, filed by Comey's own lawyers, revealed that Patrice Comey sent her husband a Google screenshot defining "86" as restaurant slang — an item that's out of stock, removed from the menu — exactly two minutes before he posted the photo.

That is the definition the Comey defense wants you to focus on. An innocent culinary term. The former head of the FBI just happened to arrange seashells into a phrase meaning "kill the 47th president," right after his wife texted him a definition of the first two digits, and it was all about dinner specials.

Then there's the other text. After someone warned Patrice that "86 47" could be read as a call for violence against the president, she responded: "Now that you said what you said and I googled and saw the right-wing narrative about the numbers, Jim will take down the post."

So to recap: Patrice researched the term before the post went up. Someone flagged the violent meaning after it went up. Patrice's response was to say "Jim will take down the post."

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley noted that the filing shows Patrice "sent him a Google screenshot of a nonviolent definition of the term '86' two minutes before Comey posted the alleged threat against President Trump." The word "nonviolent" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Why would you need to establish the nonviolent definition unless you already knew a violent one existed?

Comey's defense has called the restaurant definition "benign" and accused prosecutors of using the timing to imply Patrice lied about a separate search she conducted later. If the text was so benign, it wouldn't need a legal team running interference.

This is the man who ran the FBI. The man who lectured the country about norms, institutions, and the rule of law from every cable desk that would have him. He posted "86 47" while Trump was surviving assassination attempts — and his defense is that he thought it meant they were out of the salmon.

Two minutes between his wife's text and his post. A Google search for a definition. A wife who responded to the violent interpretation by saying "Jim will take down the post."

That's a paper trail.