Justice Department defends James Comey prosecution over seashell post
The US Justice Department has defended its prosecution of former FBI director James Comey over a social media post featuring seashells arranged to read "8647," arguing in court filings that the post could be interpreted as a threat against President Donald Trump.
Prosecutors wrote in a document filed Tuesday that "there is no serious dispute that an objective viewer of Comey's post could read it to mean 'Kill President Trump'." The filing came in response to Comey's motion to dismiss the charge.
Comey was indicted in April after a grand jury in North Carolina charged him with making a threat against the US president and transmitting that threat via social media across state lines, over an image he posted on Instagram while vacationing in North Carolina last May.
The number "86" is often used as shorthand to mean to get rid of or remove something, particularly in the restaurant service industry, while Trump is the 47th US president. Allies of the president quickly seized on the photo as a death threat.
Comey deleted the photo after the uproar, saying he didn't know it could be interpreted as a violent threat. "It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down," he said.
Decision to indict made by local US attorney, DOJ says
The Justice Department said in a court filing that its senior leadership wasn't involved in the decision to charge Comey. The filing says it was Ellis Boyle, the US attorney in Eastern North Carolina, who was behind bringing the indictment.
"No one ordered or even suggested that Boyle pursue the ongoing investigation or seek an indictment," prosecutors wrote in the filing.
Todd Blanche's tenure as acting attorney general started less than a month before the grand jury indictment. At the time, Blanche had embarked on a campaign to prove to the president that he was the right man to nominate to keep the job permanently. However, top officials in Blanche's office had been pushing to indict Comey over the picture for months, sources told CNN.
The Justice Department hopes that disclosing Boyle's approach will convince a judge that Comey wasn't targeted vindictively by prosecutors because of the president's animus toward him.
"Comey attempts to portray the decision to charge him as resulting from a directive by the President and/or the Attorney General. That is simply false," prosecutors wrote. "U.S. Attorney Boyle looked into the matter upon assuming his position and made the decision without any influence from the Attorney General, much less the President, whatsoever."
Prosecutors wrote that Boyle formally told the attorney general about the decision to seek an indictment on the day before a grand jury approved it, and only so that the attorney general would be aware of the possibility of publicity, as the Justice Manual instructs.
Comey's arguments and the previous case
Comey has argued that both the seashell case and an earlier case were the result of a Justice Department acting unfairly in response to the president's political wishes. The previous case, accusing him of lying to Congress, was dismissed by a judge last year after court proceedings uncovered issues with the Virginia-based US attorney's approach. Prosecutors said in Wednesday's filing that the previous case was dismissed on a "technicality" and not the "substantively unresolved" charges initially brought.
In trying to rebut Comey's argument that Trump has personally called for his prosecution, Justice Department attorneys argued that even if there was evidence that Trump directed Boyle or Blanche to charge Comey, "the Chief Executive directing his subordinates to exercise core Executive functions is a feature, not a bug, of our constitutional system." They added that independence between the Justice Department and Trump "is antithetical to the constitutional separation of powers (which lodges Executive power in the President alone)."
Comey's lawyers have asked the judge to dismiss the case, arguing that the post was protected speech and did not amount to a "true threat" against the president. "The indictment alleges that Mr. Comey's '86 47' post constitutes a 'true threat' on the President's life," Comey's lawyers wrote in a filing last month. "That claim is contradicted by every possible source of meaning: dictionaries, context, precedent, and common sense. '86' simply means 'get'..." They argued that "in this context, no reasonable observer would understand the phrase '86 47' to connote violence at all – let alone to threaten that Mr Comey himself would personally commit violence against the President."
In rebuttal, prosecutors cited a slang dictionary to support their finding that the post could be read as a threat, pushing back on Comey's citation from established dictionaries. They also noted that two minutes prior to posting his photo, Comey's wife sent him a screenshot of a definition for "86" as meaning "to get rid of or refuse service" – not murder or kill.
Novel cited in prosecution
Prosecutors also cited Comey's fiction book, FDR Drive, which was set for release shortly after he posted the seashell picture. The filing quoted passages from the book and a Publishers Weekly book review that described a prosecutor who "believes Buchanan went far beyond the protection of the first amendment" when he singled out his enemies by name and hinted that "something should be done" about them.
Prosecutors suggested Comey was roleplaying a far-right villain in the novel whose calls for "something to be done" about his enemies leads to attacks by his followers. "On May 15, 2025, a charismatic leader named James Comey," prosecutors wrote following an excerpt cited from the novel, "through the wonder of the internet, posted a coded message to his followers meaning 'kill' or 'get rid of' (a euphemism for 'kill') President Trump."
They also claimed Comey had "an obvious financial incentive to stir up controversy," suggesting the seashell photo was shared to boost sales of his novel. Prosecutors noted that individuals, including Comey's agent, were flagging how the post and its virality would help book sales. "Not my intent, but I'll be fine if it sells books," Comey allegedly told his agent at the time, per prosecutors.
The novel has sold 6,471 copies, according to Circana BookScan.
Threats against Trump cited
Prosecutors also highlighted the many threats and attempts on Trump's life in justifying the investigation into Comey, including from Iran. "Most recently, on July 8, 2026, Iran orchestrated a missile attack against Air Force One in an effort to kill President Trump," prosecutors wrote in a public acknowledgment of a threat. Those threats, however, do not explain the extensive efforts to investigate Comey's social media post.
PEN America criticizes use of novel
Leading US free-expression group PEN America criticized the prosecutors' use of Comey's novel. "Citing a novel to save an indictment that is constitutionally dubious is a desperate Hail Mary and should be rejected," said Mara Gassmann, legal director of PEN America, in a statement. "A political message, expressed through a photo of seashells, is no true threat; the government's resort to Comey's work of fiction in support of this prosecution inverts the very first amendment concerns raised by the government in this case." He added: "Extreme caution should be exercised any time creative works are used to support criminal charges in order to protect the free expression rights of us all."
Background
Trump's feud with Comey dates back to Comey's handling of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election while he was FBI director. That investigation found that Russia interfered "in a sweeping and systematic fashion," but it did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with Moscow's election interference activities.
Comey has denied the allegations, saying he was unaware of the post's potential meaning. The case is ongoing in federal court in Eastern North Carolina.