James Comey posted a picture of seashells and called it a beach walk.

The federal government called it a threat on the life of the President of the United States.

And now the FBI went looking for answers in a place nobody expected — straight to one of the most infamous mob figures in American history.

The Seashells That Landed Comey in Federal Court

In May 2025, former FBI Director James Comey posted a photograph to his Instagram account showing seashells arranged on a North Carolina beach to form the numbers “8647.” He deleted the post and said he had no violent intent — that he merely photographed what he found and that the slogan was a well-known expression of political opposition to President Donald Trump.

Federal prosecutors saw it differently.

A grand jury in the US District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Eastern Division, indicted Comey on charges of threatening the President and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. The government’s theory held that “86” is slang for killing or eliminating someone, and that “47” referred to Trump as the 47th President. FBI Director Kash Patel put it plainly when the indictment was announced: “As the former Director of the FBI, he knew full well the attention and consequences of making such a post.”

Comey’s attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, filed sworn affidavits in support of motions to dismiss the case. Those filings revealed something remarkable about how investigators tried to build their case — and the lengths they went to in order to prove Comey understood what “86” means in mob circles.

When the FBI Went to “Sammy the Bull”

Investigators ran the term “86” through the FBI’s own databases. Nothing. They pulled files from the old Gambino prosecution Comey had worked as a young federal prosecutor in the 1990s. Still nothing. So they went to the man himself.

Salvatore Gravano — known to the world as “Sammy the Bull,” the former underboss of the Gambino crime family — received a call from an FBI case agent in May 2026. Gravano had direct familiarity with Comey because Comey served as the lead prosecutor in United States v. John Gambino et al. in the 1990s, and Gravano was among the cooperating witnesses in that case.

According to the sworn affidavit filed by Fitzgerald, the case agent called Gravano to discuss the logistics of a forthcoming interview. Before the formal sit-down even happened, Gravano offered his view. “During the telephone conversation to discuss the logistics of his forthcoming interview, Mr. Gravano stated his belief that Mr. Comey had to know what the term ’86’ meant ‘as it related to killing someone.'”

That sounds like a win for the prosecution — until the rest of the picture comes into focus.

During the recorded 25-minute interview, Gravano said “86” generally means to “get rid of” something, and that to him, as a “gangster,” it means “to kill.” But Gravano also said he could not recall ever discussing that meaning with Comey. And the defense filings note that Gravano reportedly said a “gangster would never use that term” because law enforcement already knew it.

Gravano did not interpret Comey’s post as a statement that Comey personally intended to commit violence, according to the defense.

Two retired FBI agents who had spent decades working organized crime cases also told investigators they did not recall mobsters using “86” to mean murder, according to Comey’s attorneys.

A Case Built on Gaps — and What It Tells You About the Prosecution

The picture that emerges from Comey’s defense filings is of investigators who searched exhaustively for a foundation and kept coming up short. FBI databases produced nothing. Trial transcripts and the original Gambino case file produced nothing. The mob veteran they eventually tracked down said Comey “had to know” — but also said he never talked to Comey about it and that a real gangster wouldn’t have used the term anyway.

US Attorney Ellis Boyle pushed back on the notion that Comey was singled out. “Our office regularly pursues threat cases including those against public officials,” Boyle said. “The Grand Jury examined the evidence in this case and found probable cause to indict Mr. Comey.”

The Justice Department maintains that Comey knowingly posted a threat against Trump and consciously disregarded the risk that others would view it as threatening violence. That is the government’s theory, and it will have to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.

Comey’s attorneys argue the indictment “targets protected speech at the heart of the First Amendment.” They note in their filing that “thousands of items featuring this slogan have been sold on the internet and are available to this day, and the slogan was commonly displayed at protests around the country in the months preceding Mr. Comey’s post.” Comey himself said in a video response to the charges: “I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.”

The defense also alleged in separate filings that the Secret Service conducted warrantless surveillance of Comey after the post — physical and electronic — and that a Secret Service supervisor acknowledged the surveillance was “legally questionable” but that the agency “might do it anyway.” Those allegations, if accurate, raise serious Fourth Amendment concerns about how the investigation was conducted regardless of one’s view of Comey himself.

Prosecutors were given until August 18 to respond to Comey’s motions to dismiss.

But here is what the Gravano angle actually reveals. The FBI went through every institutional channel it had — databases, old case files, retired agents — and came up empty. Then investigators turned to a man who confessed to involvement in 19 murders, who has been off the streets since 1990, and who told them what they were looking for while simultaneously undercutting the theory they needed him to confirm.

Gravano said Comey had to know. He also said a gangster would never use the term. He also said he never discussed it with Comey. And he did not believe Comey’s post was a personal expression of intent to commit violence.

That is not exactly a clean win for the prosecution.

And it raises a question worth sitting with: if the government’s theory rested on Comey’s unique knowledge of mob terminology from a 1990s prosecution, and the cooperating witness from that very case says he never discussed the term with Comey and wouldn’t have used it himself anyway, what exactly is the evidentiary foundation holding this case together?

Comey’s history with the FBI and with the Trump administration is long and contentious. Trump fired him in 2017. The Russia investigation that followed consumed years of his first term. Whatever one thinks of Comey’s conduct during that period — and there is plenty to criticize — the question of whether a photograph of seashells constitutes a federal threat to the President is a different kind of question entirely.

The court will sort it out. But the image of FBI agents combing through 30-year-old mob case files and dialing up Sammy the Bull for a phone call about seashell linguistics is not the picture of a prosecution built on solid ground. It is the picture of investigators searching hard for something they needed and not quite finding it.

Sources: Fox News; Dallas Express; ABC News; CNBC; First Amendment Encyclopedia, Middle Tennessee State University