The Justice Department has pulled Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Petracca from the federal case accusing James Comey of threatening President Trump with a seashells photo, and replaced him with another prosecutor as the trial date nears. Court papers filed late Friday say Timothy Severo is now handling the case.
The change lands at a sensitive moment for the matthew petracca comey seashells case because it comes before an October trial and after the indictment already drew sharp criticism from Comey's defense team. The filing gives no explanation for why Petracca is being removed, even though he had been listed as the government's lead lawyer on the case.
Comey was charged last month in North Carolina after prosecutors said a May 2025 Instagram post showing seashells arranged as “86 47” amounted to a threat against the president. He deleted the photo quickly, then posted that he “didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence” and said he had spotted the shells on a beach walk and “assumed [they] were a political message.”
The case centers on that image, which federal prosecutors say supported one count of threatening the president's life and one count of transmitting an interstate threat. Attorney General Todd Blanche has said the North Carolina case was driven by “local prosecutors” and “local agents,” though he added that he did not even know their names. That backdrop has only intensified scrutiny of who is actually steering the prosecution now.
The unanswered question is not whether the case is moving forward; it is why Petracca has been taken off this one and at least three other cases since last week. The filings do not say, and that silence matters because the defense is already expected to seek dismissal on selective and vindictive prosecution grounds. Comey's lawyers will have fresh material to press before trial, and the government will have to keep explaining its own house while the case moves toward October.
Comey, a former FBI director fired by Trump in 2017, has long been a target of the president's anger, and a separate Justice Department effort to prosecute him for allegedly lying to Congress was thrown out by a federal judge in Virginia because the prosecutor who led that case was improperly appointed. For now, the seashells case turns on a post that was deleted in minutes, a lead prosecutor who is suddenly gone, and a trial calendar that is still in place.
