Comey asks judge to dismiss Trump 8647 seashells case

Former FBI Director James Comey formally asked a federal judge on Monday to dismiss his indictment on charges of threatening to kill President Donald Trump, saying the photo he posted of seashells with the number “8647” on them did not represent a “real threat.”

Comey’s lawyers said in their motion that the photo showing seashells on a North Carolina beach was free speech protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

And they said the number 8647 was “a well-known political slogan expressing opposition to the president.”

“No reasonable observer would understand that the phrase ’86 47′ would even connote violence – let alone threaten that Mr. Comey would personally use violence against the President,” the motion states.

Comey is a leading critic of Trump, who fired him as FBI director in May 2017.

Trump is the 47th president of the United States and said he interpreted the photo of seashells as a threat to kill himself.

Comey said he was targeted by the Justice Department because of Trump’s hostility towards him.

Comey was indicted in April by a grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina on charges of threatening the president and disseminating threats in interstate commerce with the photo “8647.”

Comey’s lawyers said in a motion to dismiss filed Monday: “This indictment targets protected speech at the heart of the First Amendment.

“In fact, thousands of products featuring this slogan were sold online and remain available to this day, and the slogan was widely displayed at protests across the country in the months prior to Mr. Comey’s post,” the motion said.

“But the government has now chosen Mr. Comey to prosecute one of the President’s most prominent critics for publishing another person’s political dissenting statement. This attempt to suppress fundamental political speech violates both that statute and the First Amendment.”

The claim that the “8647” post “poses a ‘real threat’ to the President’s life” is “contradicted by every possible source of meaning, including dictionaries, context, precedent, and common sense,” defense attorneys wrote.

“’86’ simply means ‘to get rid of’ or ‘to take out,’ and has no violent connotation except in the rarest of uses,” the attorneys wrote. “Most dictionaries don’t even list the government’s current proposed meaning of ‘to kill.’ And when combined with ’47’ (slang for President Trump, the forty-seventh President), ’86’ becomes nothing more than a call to oppose President Trump.”

This case marks the second time Comey has been indicted during Trump’s second term in the White House, after publicly saying the president committed a crime.

Comey was indicted by a federal grand jury in Virginia last September on charges related to allegations he lied during testimony at the trial. Senate Judiciary Committee On September 30, 2020, he denied allowing someone else from the FBI to be an anonymous source for news about an investigation into Hillary Clinton and her emails while she was the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate.

Comey has denied any wrongdoing.

A judge dismissed the first lawsuit in November after ruling that Trump’s former personal attorney, Lindsey Halligan, was illegally appointed as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Halligan had obtained the indictment against Comey.