The decision to charge former FBI Director James Comey over a social media post showing seashells arranged as “86 47” was made without influence from President Donald Trump or Justice Department leaders, federal prosecutors said in a court filing on Tuesday.
In more than 100 pages of court filings added to the docket late Tuesday, the department said Ellis Boyle, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, independently decided to seek the indictment. The filing responded to Comey’s effort to dismiss the case as a vindictive prosecution driven by Trump’s longstanding hostility 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.
Boyle did not discuss the decision with Attorney General Todd Blanche until the day before presenting the case to a grand jury, the filing said. Prosecutors said Boyle notified Blanche only because DOJ guidelines call for senior officials to be alerted to cases likely to generate publicity.
“No one ordered, directed, or pressured me or my office to continue the investigation,” Boyle wrote.
Blanche, then serving as deputy attorney general, and FBI Director Kash Patel publicly supported the prosecution when the indictment was announced in April.
Comey posted the photograph on Instagram in May 2025, then deleted it after critics said the numbers could be interpreted as a call for violence against Trump, the 47th president. The term “86” commonly means to discard, remove, or refuse service. It is also used as slang in the restaurant industry to indicate when a particular food item has run out.
Comey said he did not realize some people associated the expression with violence and has denied making a threat.
Prosecutors argued that an objective viewer could read the image as meaning “Kill President Trump.” They said Comey’s wife texted him a definition of “86” two minutes before the post and questioned his account that he happened upon the shells during a beach walk.
The government also linked the post to publicity for Comey’s then-forthcoming novel. According to the filing, Comey told his publishing agent he would be “OK if it sells books” after the image went viral.
“Among other reasons, at nearly the same time as the post in question, Comey published a novel where the antagonist successfully persuades his followers to kill his political rivals by communicating coded messages online,” prosecutors wrote. “Needless to say, Comey does not and could not point to similar evidence in any comparator case—let alone a threat against the sitting President of the United States.”
Comey’s lawyers say the post was protected political speech and that investigators failed to establish he intended violence. They also accuse investigators of misleading judges, withholding relevant facts, and omitting evidence that undercut the government’s theory.
The case is the second brought against Comey by the current DOJ. A separate prosecution accusing him of lying to Congress was dismissed last year after a judge identified problems involving the appointment of the U.S. attorney who brought it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit is scheduled to hear oral arguments in mid-September on whether a federal judge erred in disqualifying the lead prosecutor handling the separate Comey indictment, as well as another indictment alleging mortgage fraud violations by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Comey is scheduled to be arraigned in his threats case on Sept. 30. A tentative trial date is set for Oct. 21.