Prosecutors say Comey seashell post could be read as Trump threat

Defense argues prosecution is vindictive, post is protected speech

Prosecutors filed the motions Tuesday in response to the defense’s efforts to dismiss the indictment. The filings represent the government’s most substantive court argument to date in the case against Comey.

At issue is a May 2025 Instagram post by Comey in which he photographed seashells arranged in the numerical pattern “86 47.” Comey has said he encountered the shells in that arrangement while walking on a beach in North Carolina.

In Tuesday’s filings, prosecutors pushed back on that account. They wrote that the post was instead “a thinly veiled attempt to sell copies of a forthcoming novel about a social media personality whose words have inspired his fans to attack his foes.”

The defense has moved to dismiss the indictment on multiple grounds. Two of those, addressed at length in Tuesday’s government response, are that the prosecution is vindictive and that Comey’s post did not amount to a “true threat” — the legal standard for speech that falls outside First Amendment protection.

The “true threat” doctrine, established in Supreme Court precedent, distinguishes unprotected intimidation from political speech that may be hostile or offensive. Prosecutors’ Tuesday language — that the post “could be understood as a threat” — tracks that constitutional standard, which asks whether a reasonable observer would read the words as a serious expression of intent to harm.

A vindictive-prosecution claim typically requires a defendant to show that the government brought charges to punish the exercise of a legal right, rather than to vindicate the law.