Lawyers for former FBI Director James Comey asked a court to dismiss his prosecution, alleging false statements, material omissions and selective enforcement. New defense filings challenge the warrants, grand-jury process and surveillance used in a prosecution that the government says concerns a threat against President Trump. Comey was charged over a 2025 social-media photograph showing seashells in the numerical arrangement “86 47.”
The Justice Department says the image constituted a threat against Donald Trump, the 47th president; Comey says he understood the phrase as political opposition and deleted it after learning others read it differently. Defense lawyers said FBI database searches and interviews did not establish that Comey associated “86” with killing, but that those results were omitted from warrant applications. A court can suppress evidence if a warrant relied on intentional or reckless falsehoods that were material to probable cause.
The filings also alleged that affidavits contained false statements about Comey's lawyer and wife and distorted an estranged acquaintance's account. Prosecutors will have an opportunity to respond and have said they intend to prove intent through witnesses, documents and other admissible evidence. Comey was FBI director until Trump fired him in 2017, and the two have remained public adversaries.
An earlier prosecution alleging that Comey lied to Congress was dismissed after a judge found the prosecutor who brought it had been unlawfully appointed.
The remaining evidentiary limit is specific: The defense filings are allegations, not judicial findings, and the government's complete evidence and response were not available at the cutoff. The next records expected to change the factual picture are the Justice Department's response to the dismissal motions and whether the judge orders a hearing on the warrant affidavits. Until those records appear, the attributed figures, filings and official descriptions remain the most current public account and may be revised by the institutions that produced them. Each figure refers to the date and scope identified above; it does not imply a later total or broader category. Subsequent orders, filings, datasets or official updates can revise those figures without changing the documented sequence of events at the cutoff.