In a series of defense filings Tuesday, the former FBI director urged a judge to dismiss charges that he threatened President Donald Trump’s life, calling the investigation an improper effort to punish him for his criticism of the president.
Read more Trump administration seeks $10 million more for Freedom 250 events
FBI agents interviewed convicted mobster Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano and relied on statements from an actress from the TV show “Scandal” as part of what lawyers for former FBI director James B. Comey described late Tuesday as a highly unusual effort to prosecute him over a social media post.
Those new details emerged in a series of court filings from Comey’s defense team attacking the charges filed against him earlier this year over a photo he posted to Instagram of seashells spelling out “86 47.”
The Justice Department has characterized the May 2025 post as a threat to President Donald Trump, saying that “86” is known slang for “murder” and “47” refers to Trump, the 47th president of the United States. Comey has apologized for the posting but denied he had any violent intent, and derided the prosecution as an improper effort to target him for his vocal criticism of the president.
The filings by Comey’s defense include FBI search warrant applications for Comey’s digital accounts, memos detailing several interviews conducted by agents and other government documents provided to Comey’s defense team in preparation for trial. They provide the fullest account to date of the Justice Department’s stop-and-start efforts over nearly a year to secure an indictment in the face of sustained pressure from the White House to charge Comey with a crime.
“Ample objective evidence — much of which comes directly from government officials’ own public statements and admissions — establishes that the President’s animus toward Mr. Comey led to this vindictive and selective prosecution,” Comey’s lawyers wrote.
The Justice Department has not yet filed its formal response to Comey’s claims.
In the Tuesday filings, Comey’s attorneys described “86 47″ as a “slogan used to oppose President Trump.”
At one point, shortly after Comey took down the photo of the shells — which he has said he stumbled across while walking on a beach in North Carolina — a top Justice Department official ordered the Secret Service to surveil the former FBI director and his wife, the defense lawyers said. They said government documents showed Trump sought updates on that surveillance in real time as he returned from a foreign trip on Air Force One.
The filings indicate that even as agents forged ahead with their investigation, they repeatedly struggled to find evidence to substantiate the central claim of their case: that in posting the photo Comey knowingly posed a “true threat” to the president.
For instance, when an agent interviewed Gravano — a Gambino crime family member turned government cooperator — this spring in hopes he would back up their contention that “86” was well-known mafia slang, the mobster insisted, according to the defense filings, that “a gangster would never use that term.”
Gravano did not indicate that he viewed Comey’s seashell post as a threat to personally attack the president, according to a memo recounting that interview included in the defense filings. But he acknowledged that the former FBI director, who had prosecuted mob cases earlier in his career, would have likely heard the term “86” used with violent connotations previously.
Gravano urged the investigators to speak to John Gleeson, a famed former New York mob prosecutor and contemporary of Comey’s, to back up his assessment.
It was not clear from the filings Tuesday whether the FBI followed up on that suggestion, but Comey’s team did.
“The claim that ‘86’ is mafia jargon for ‘kill’ is preposterous,” Gleeson, a former judge now in private practice, wrote in an affidavit included in the defense team’s filings. “If it weren’t made in the context of seeking to deprive a man of his liberty, it would be laughable.”
Federal agents also interviewed a person described in the filings Tuesday as an estranged former associate of Comey. That individual is identified in the documents only as “Person-1,” and their job and connection to Comey is not detailed.
Read more What do tennis pros think about between points? Inside those 25 pivotal seconds.
That person made clear from the start that she was not supportive of Comey and said she “hoped he goes to jail” for the “crimes he committed” as FBI director. But she told agents she did not initially view Comey’s post as threatening, and believed “86” was slang used among workers in the food service industry to describe when an item was taken off a menu.
It was only after the person heard former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani on a podcast discussing the term in the context of the mafia that she began to believe the post could be seen as a call for violence, the person told agents, according to a summary of that interview included in the defense filings.
At one point, agents even turned to artificial intelligence tools in hopes of finding support for the claim that “86” was mafia slang. The tool they used described that theory as an “urban legend,” according to Comey’s lawyers.
Despite those setbacks, the investigation continued for nearly a year. Trump has repeatedly called for Comey to be charged with a crime. And that pressure only intensified after a previous Justice Department effort to prosecute the Comey for alleged false statements to Congress was thrown out before trial by a federal judge who concluded the U.S. attorney overseeing the case had been illegally appointed.
In April, Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi in part over his frustration with the pace of her efforts to prosecute his perceived political enemies. The defense documents Tuesday show that the investigation of Comey’s seashell post intensified shortly after her firing, under Bondi’s replacement and former deputy, acting attorney general Todd Blanche.
Though department officials had previously shopped the case to federal prosecutors in Virginia, it was the U.S. attorney’s office in Raleigh, North Carolina, near the beach where Comey saw the seashell arrangement, that ultimately took up the case.
FBI agents there applied for two search warrants to access Comey’s electronic records in March and May. In them, they sought to undermine Comey’s public apologies for the post, including during an appearance he made to explain the situation on “The Late Show with Steven Colbert.”
Investigators cited a 2014 Slate interview with actress Darby Stanchfield, who starred in the TV show “Scandal,” detailing how TV show guests often do “pre-interviews” with a show’s producers to work out what they will say on air. Based on that account, the agent wrote, it was likely that Comey workshopped his apology for the seashell post before his appearance on Colbert’s show.
That assertion was included in one of the filings from Comey’s defense team’s Tuesday, as his lawyers accused prosecutors of twisting information and hiding other details from the magistrate judges who approved the warrants, including investigators’ previous failed attempts to substantiate the violent meaning of “86.″ Those omissions, the attorneys said, should warrant dismissal of the case.
Comey’s lawyers have also sought dismissal on a number of other grounds, including that Comey’s post was protected by the First Amendment and that the case amounts to an improperly vindictive prosecution driven not by the facts but by the president’s animus toward Comey.
The Justice Department is expected to file its formal response to Comey’s claims early next month and a trial is currently scheduled for the fall. Department officials have not yet said what evidence they intend to present against Comey should they get the opportunity to present their case to a jury.
Comey was charged with one count of making threats against the president and another count of transmitting a threat against state lines.
Blanche, speaking to reporters about the case earlier this year, defended the department’s investigation and predicted prosecutors would be able to prove Comey’s ill intent to a jury.
“You prove intent with witnesses, with documents, with the defendant himself to the extent it’s appropriate,” he said. “And that’s how we’ll prove intent in this case.”
Read more Graham Platner still hangs over the Maine Senate race
