The U.S. Justice Department under President Donald Trump is strongly opposing former FBI Director James Comey’s latest effort to shut down criminal charges over his controversial seashell photograph.
Trump’s DOJ insisted in court on Wednesday that a jury—not a judge—must decide whether the post amounted to a true threat against the president’s life.
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In a forceful filing, federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of North Carolina rejected Comey’s motion to dismiss the indictment.
They argued that the former top law enforcement official is trying to short-circuit the legal process before any evidence can be presented.
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The case centers on a photo Comey shared of seashells arranged on a beach to form the numbers “86 47.”
Prosecutors contend the message can reasonably be interpreted as a call to “kill” President Trump, the nation’s 47th president, with “86” carrying a known slang meaning of elimination or death in certain contexts.
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“The issue presented is who should answer the ‘true threats’ question. … Comey seeks to take the question away from the jury before the government presents any evidence (or even allegations setting forth its theory of the case,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.
“No authority supports his attempt to short-circuit these proceedings,” they added.
This marks the second prosecution the Trump Justice Department has brought against Comey, a longtime political adversary who led the FBI during the deeply flawed Russia collusion probe that many conservatives view as a politicized attempt to undermine Trump’s first term.
The current charges arise from an incident in a North Carolina beach town within the Eastern District, where Comey encountered and photographed the shell arrangement before posting it online.
Comey’s legal team is countering and has filed a motion to throw out the case entirely.
Comey’s team claims the prosecution is driven by politics rather than legitimate evidence.
They insisted the seashell image alone falls far short of a true threat under the law and that no reasonable person would view it as a personal vow of violence by Comey himself.
Comey argues his case is a vindictive, selective prosecution that must be dismissed
Justice Dept response includes a reference to a text from a Comey relatives accusing Comey and his wife of having “TDS” pic.twitter.com/qYhEwMuv9W
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) August 19, 2026
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“To justify this prosecution, the indictment alleges that Mr. Comey’s ‘86 47’ post constitutes a ‘true threat’ on the President’s life,” his attorneys wrote at the time.
“That claim is contradicted by every possible source of meaning: dictionaries, context, precedent, and common sense,” his attorneys added.
“‘86’ simply means ‘get rid of’ or ‘eject’ and has no violent connotation except in the most uncommon usages. Most dictionaries do not even list the meaning — ’to kill’ — that the government now proposes,” they continued.
“And when combined with “47” — slang for President Trump, the forty-seventh President — ’86’ becomes nothing more than a call to oppose President Trump,” they added.
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The lawyers added, “Thus, in this context, 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.”
Prosecutors pushed back hard, noting they are under no obligation to reveal their full evidentiary case inside the four corners of an indictment.
They emphasized that additional material will be introduced when the matter reaches trial in October.
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Critically, they highlighted that Comey himself deleted the post and acknowledged in writing that some people might construe the message as conveying a violent meaning, depending on the surrounding circumstances.
“It would be exceedingly odd for this Court to dismiss an indictment concerning a post that Comey agrees could have been understood to convey a violent message depending on the context without the government having ever had the opportunity to present evidence of that context,” the prosecutors wrote.
“There is no serious dispute that an objective viewer of Comey’s post could read it to mean ‘Kill President Trump,’” they added later.
This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
