{"id":4490,"date":"2026-07-29T11:11:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T11:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationwideinterstatemovers.com\/?p=4490"},"modified":"2026-07-29T11:11:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T11:11:41","slug":"comeys-86-47%e2%80%b2-trump-seashell-case-gets-even-weirder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationwideinterstatemovers.com\/?p=4490","title":{"rendered":"Comey\u2019s \u201886 47\u2032 Trump Seashell Case Gets Even Weirder"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Former FBI Director James Comey has filed a motion to dismiss President Donald Trump\u2019s case against him for an Instagram post, exposing wild new details about how the investigation was conducted.<\/p>\n

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Comey, 65, was indicted in April over a post he shared on the platform last May that officials said threatened violence against the 80-year-old president. The post, captioned \u201cCool shell formation on my beach walk,\u201d showed seashells arranged to spell out \u201c86 47.\u201d In slang, the number 86 can mean tossing something out or getting rid of it. Critics took the post to imply Comey thinks Trump should be killed, given that he is the 47th president. <\/p>\n

\n

Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced an investigation into Comey over the post, which she alleged \u201ccalled for the assassination\u201d of Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

On Tuesday, Comey\u2019s team filed a motion to dismiss the indictment, and the documents attached to that filing revealed a string of bizarre details about the case. <\/p>\n

His lawyers argued he was only being pursued because he had criticized the president, and that Comey had established actual \u201cprosecutorial vindictiveness,\u201d since Trump had already set his Justice Department on him once before. <\/p>\n

Last September, the department accused Comey of lying to Congress over press leaks, a case that was thrown out after a judge determined that Trump\u2019s attack dog in the matter, Lindsey Halligan, a federal attorney with no prosecutorial experience, had been illegally appointed. \u201cThe President harbors genuine animus toward Mr. Comey,\u201d the new filing states.<\/p>\n

That animus is nothing new. Trump fired Comey in 2017 over the Russia election interference investigation, and Comey has been a fierce critic of the president ever since. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi failed to make a case against him stick, but the effort appears to have been revived under acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump\u2019s former personal lawyer.<\/p>\n

Comey\u2019s lawyers say the White House was so fixated on the initial Secret Service investigation that top officials demanded updates while Trump was flying home from Europe. Law enforcement, they argue, went to extreme lengths to track him down. <\/p>\n

According to the documents, federal agents used emergency phone-tracking to follow Comey as he drove from North Carolina to northern Virginia shortly after the post went up. That kind of warrant-free location tracking is supposed to be reserved for true emergencies, requiring law enforcement to claim there is \u201can imminent threat to life or limb,\u201d one Secret Service official noted in the filings. <\/p>\n

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Except there was no emergency. When the Secret Service first reached out, Comey declined to share his exact whereabouts but agreed to sit down with investigators in Washington, D.C., the next day. Internal records show agents knew they were crossing a line. One unnamed Secret Service official admitted in a memo, \u201cwe did not believe that anyone\u2019s life was in immediate danger and legally it was a bad idea to ping the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n

The filings also reveal that, in an effort to prove \u201c86\u201d meant murder, the Justice Department interviewed Salvatore \u201cSammy the Bull\u201d Gravano, a former mobster who has admitted involvement in more than a dozen killings. He was one of John Gotti\u2019s closest associates and was his underboss in the Gambino crime family.<\/p>\n

Comey\u2019s team pointed out that in those interviews, Gravano said real mobsters wouldn\u2019t even use the term, since it\u2019s too obvious. He said law enforcement officials would likely know its macabre connotations, but offered nothing to suggest he believed Comey did. Comey, for his part, deleted the post shortly after sharing it and said he had no idea of its hidden meaning, explaining that he \u201cdidn\u2019t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Search warrant affidavits also cite an unnamed Comey associate, interviewed by the FBI in April, who said they told Comey\u2019s wife, Patricia, about the term\u2019s meaning soon after the post went live, and then contacted the Secret Service, arguing Comey would have known what the numbers meant. <\/p>\n

But that associate\u2019s belief was reportedly based on having listened to a Rudy Giuliani podcast, in which the former New York City mayor suggested that Comey\u2019s law enforcement background meant he\u2019d have known the term\u2019s origins. Comey\u2019s lawyers argued that none of his cases ever involved the word, and noted the associate is estranged from him.<\/p>\n

Gravano, ironically, ended up helping Comey\u2019s case further when he suggested FBI agents contact longtime prosecutor John Gleeson for his take. \u201cThe claim that \u201986\u2032 is mafia jargon for \u2018kill\u2019 is preposterous,\u201d Gleeson wrote, citing thousands of hours of debriefings and conversations with mafia members in which the term was never used that way.<\/p>\n

In an FBI affidavit seeking Comey\u2019s Apple iCloud records, agents even pointed to his May 20, 2025, appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert<\/i>, where he discussed the seashell post. To justify searching his account, the investigating agent cited a Slate interview with Scandal<\/i> actress Darby Stanchfield, who described going through \u201cpre-interviews\u201d ahead of late-night appearances, and used her comments to infer that Comey had likely discussed the seashells during his own prep sessions.<\/p>\n

Comey\u2019s defense team filed its motion to dismiss on Monday with U.S. District Court Judge Louise Flanagan, arguing that the \u201c86-47\u201d image fails to meet Supreme Court precedent for a \u201ctrue threat\u201d and that the charges violate his First Amendment rights. Flanagan, a George W. Bush appointee, has set an October 21 trial date for the former FBI director.<\/p>\n

Read more eBay Pays $56M to Couple Targeted in Cockroach Harassment Campaign<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The White House has been approached for comment. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former FBI Director James Comey has filed a motion to dismiss President Donald Trump\u2019s case against him for an Instagram post, exposing wild new details about how the investigation was conducted. Read more Putin Hit With Big Setback After U.S. Makes Major Move Comey, 65, was indicted in April over a post he shared on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4489,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nComey\u2019s \u201886 47\u2032 Trump Seashell Case Gets Even Weirder - Nationwide Inter State Movers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nationwideinterstatemovers.com\/?p=4490\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Comey\u2019s \u201886 47\u2032 Trump Seashell Case Gets Even Weirder - Nationwide Inter State Movers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Former FBI Director James Comey has filed a motion to dismiss President Donald Trump\u2019s case against him for an Instagram post, exposing wild new details about how the investigation was conducted. 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