James Comey's defense team claims federal prosecutors turned to a confessed killer from the Gambino crime family for help interpreting an Instagram post, and that the government's own witnesses undercut its case.
Lawyers for the former FBI director filed two sweeping motions in federal court on Tuesday, alleging that the Department of Justice interviewed gangster Sammy "The Bull" Gravano less than a month after Comey's April indictment and that agents misled judges when seeking search warrants for his electronic accounts. The filings ask the court to suppress evidence seized from Apple and Google and to dismiss the case outright on grounds of vindictive and selective prosecution.
The motions land the most detailed public account yet of how the government built its case, and, according to the defense, how it fell apart behind closed doors. At the center is a photo Comey posted on Instagram showing seashells arranged to spell "8647." Federal prosecutors say the post amounted to a threat against the life of President Donald Trump. Comey's lawyers say it was protected speech, and that the government's own evidence proves it.
The defense filing lays out a striking sequence. After the grand jury returned a two-count indictment in April, prosecutors and an FBI agent sat down with Gravano, a man who confessed to involvement in 19 murders, including the killings of his best friend and his brother-in-law, before becoming a government cooperator. The interview's purpose, ABC News reported, was to get Gravano's read on whether "86" carried a violent meaning in organized crime circles.
Gravano told the interviewer that all law enforcement agents would know "86" as mob slang for murder. But he also said "a gangster would never use that term" precisely because law enforcement knew what it meant. And he did not interpret Comey's seashells post as a personal threat to carry out violence against the president.
Gravano's lawyer declined to share further details about the interview but told ABC News that Gravano "is happy to appear and testify truthfully" at Comey's trial.
Before the government reached out to Gravano, agents had already searched the FBI's own database, trial transcripts from the Gambino case file, and AI-powered search engines. None of those searches turned up evidence linking "86" to violence, the defense filing states. Two retired FBI agents who spent decades working organized crime cases told investigators the same thing, neither recalled the term being used to reference murder.
The DOJ's decision to consult a confessed mob killer, and then, the defense argues, to bury his unhelpful answers, fits a pattern of prosecutorial conduct that has drawn scrutiny across multiple politically charged cases. A former member of Jack Smith's team was recently indicted for allegedly hiding DOJ records under fake file names, raising fresh questions about how the department handles sensitive investigations.
The defense filings take aim at the government's key civilian witness, identified only as "Person-1." This individual reached out to Comey's wife after the seashells photo appeared, warning that the post could be seen as a call for violence. Comey removed the photo that same day.
But the defense paints Person-1 as deeply unreliable. The filing states Person-1 had been estranged from Comey for at least two years, had left a prior career and entered rehab, and openly told investigators that he hoped Comey "goes to jail" for "crimes that he committed" as FBI director. No follow-up questions explored what issues led Person-1 to seek rehabilitation or whether those issues had been resolved.
Person-1's interpretation of the post shifted over time. Originally, Person-1 understood "86" through its common food-service meaning, to remove an item from a menu. Only after listening to a Rudy Giuliani podcast episode, in which Giuliani claimed Comey had worked organized crime cases where "86" meant "kill," did Person-1 change course. Person-1 later described the revised assessment as "speculation" and "conjecture."
Agents nonetheless cited Person-1's account in a search warrant affidavit, claiming the witness "immediately perceived the term '86' 47' as a call to get rid of, in a violent way, or even to assassinate President Trump." The defense argues agents knowingly omitted details that would have "eviscerated" their case theory.
Comey's lawyers put it bluntly in their filing:
"The Fourth Amendment safeguards all Americans' privacy against arbitrary government invasions. It does so by generally requiring the government to obtain a warrant from a magistrate before conducting a search. Here, the government upended that constitutionally-mandated process by misleading the issuing magistrates about fundamental facts of the case."
Questions about DOJ overreach have surfaced repeatedly in recent months. Records revealed that Jack Smith's team accessed text messages belonging to 44 lawmakers while bypassing the department's own internal safeguards, conduct that prompted its own wave of congressional scrutiny.
The second filing, the motion to dismiss, goes further, alleging the prosecution was politically motivated from the start. Comey's lawyers claim the Secret Service coordinated closely with the DOJ and with the president himself on the day of Comey's initial interview.
The filing cites what it describes as a timeline showing that Secret Service agents sent frequent updates to Air Force One at Trump's direct request. One entry states plainly: "POTUS was requesting a copy of the interview notes to use in his 6 pm press conference."
The defense filing includes dozens of pages of Trump's public statements about Comey dating back to 2016. Comey's lawyers argue those statements demonstrate "genuine animus" and that the indictment "effectuates a yearslong campaign by the President to use the criminal process to punish Mr. Comey for his protected speech and because of the President's deep-seated animosity."
The filing also takes aim at the leadership changes atop the Justice Department. Comey's lawyers allege former Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired in part because she failed to prosecute Trump's political opponents, and that Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche treated the Comey case as an "audition." The defense wrote:
"The inference is clear: the newly installed political officials in the DOJ strove to accomplish what their predecessors could not, namely, effectuating the President's desire to punish Mr. Comey."
Rep. Jim Jordan has pursued his own line of DOJ accountability, referring Jack Smith for criminal prosecution over allegations of false testimony, a reminder that pressure on the department's conduct now comes from both the defense bar and Capitol Hill.
Comey's lawyers argue the case fails a basic selective-prosecution test. The filing notes that Amazon lists 209,052 items displaying "8645," "8646," or "8647", and that not one seller or buyer faced charges. The defense calls Comey's prosecution "the first indictment solely for publishing '86' in connection with a public official."
The filing also states the FBI created a new policy after Comey's post, treating "8647" as coded language for threatening the president "effective immediately." Comey's lawyers argue the policy was written to fit the prosecution, not the other way around.
Several public figures, the defense contends, made statements about government officials "comparable to, or far more violent than" Comey's post. None was charged. The filing does not name those figures specifically.
The defense also raised concerns about the grand jury process itself, requesting prosecutors turn over transcripts and recordings. The filing references a now-dismissed prior case against Comey in Virginia in which prosecutors acknowledged the entire grand jury did not see the final indictment. Comey's lawyers wrote that "the record in this case raises a significant risk that irregularities in the grand jury process influenced the grand jury to return an indictment."
The broader pattern of politically adjacent federal investigations continues to expand. The FBI recently opened a classified leak investigation targeting Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats after a referral from the NSA, adding another front to the ongoing collision between law enforcement and elected officials.
The government's public position has not changed. U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle said when announcing the indictment in April:
"Our office regularly pursues threat cases including those against public officials. The Grand Jury examined the evidence in this case and found probable cause to indict Mr. Comey. We will continue to pursue the case as we regularly do every day to protect the people of this District and the United States."
FBI Director Kash Patel, who appeared alongside Blanche at the April 28 press conference, framed the case around Comey's former position. "As the former Director of the FBI, he knew full well the attention and consequences of making such a post," Patel said.
The White House has denied that Trump is using the Justice Department to target political adversaries. No court has yet ruled on any of Comey's pending motions.
When the government's star gangster witness says the defendant's Instagram post wasn't a threat, and the government's own databases, retired agents, and AI searches all came up empty, the case starts to look less like law enforcement and more like a conclusion in search of evidence.
