Comey asks judge to dismiss seashell 'threat' case
· UPIJuly 27 (UPI) -- Former FBI Director James Comey formally asked a judge Monday to dismiss the case accusing him of threatening to kill President Donald Trump, saying a photo of seashells spelling out "86 47" can't be considered "a true threat."
"No reasonable observer would understand the phrase '86 47' to connote violence at all -- let alone to threaten that Mr. Comey personally would commit violence against the president," the motion filed by Comey's lawyers says.
Comey took the photograph of seashells forming those numbers on a North Carolina beach in 2025 and shared it online. He was then indicted by a grand jury in April on charges of threatening the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce.
Comey's attorneys said in the motion that the claim the shared photo represented a real threat "is contradicted by every possible source of meaning: dictionaries, context, precedent and common sense."
"'86' simply means 'get rid of' or 'eject' and has no violent connotation except in the most uncommon usages," they wrote. "Most dictionaries do not even list the meaning -- 'to kill' -- that the government now proposes. And when combined with '47' -- slang for President Trump, the 47th president - '86' becomes nothing more than a call to oppose President Trump."
Prosecuting Comey for sharing another person's "statement of political opposition" is a violation of First Amendment protections on free speech, the motion said. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
The former FBI director is a longstanding critic of the president, who fired him in 2017. Comey said Trump is targeting him because of his criticism. This is the second time a grand jury has indicted Comey during Trump's second term after the president claimed he'd committed a crime. A judge dismissed the first case in November.
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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during a press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Thursday. Photo by Samuel Corum/UPI | License Photo