James Comey’s lawyers asked a federal court in North Carolina on Tuesday to throw out his criminal case, accusing the US Secret Service of illegally surveilling him while investigators examined his seashell photo marked “8647.” The filing widens the fight around the case and turns the scrutiny away from the post itself and toward how the government pursued it.
The motion says law enforcement did not stop at reviewing the post. It alleges that investigators turned to ChatGPT and a known mafia killer while looking for a basis to criminally charge Comey, and that Donald Trump asked for regular updates as the inquiry moved forward. It also says the case should be dismissed because it was driven by vindictive and selective prosecution, not a neutral review of the facts.
That challenge lands now because Comey has already gone back to court once this week. In a separate filing, he asked for dismissal on the ground that the post was protected speech and not a true threat against the president. The Justice Department, which filed the criminal case in April, says the photo spelling out “8647” amounted to a threat on the US president’s life. The number drew attention because “86” is often used as shorthand for getting rid of something, while Trump is the 47th US president.
Comey has said he found the shell formation while on vacation with his wife in eastern North Carolina in May 2025, posted it to Instagram and deleted it after saying he did not know it could be read as a violent threat. He and Patrice then voluntarily spoke with Secret Service investigators after the incident, a detail that makes the surveillance claim harder to square with the idea of a hidden chase. If the interview was voluntary, the question is why agents were also weighing phone tracking and what exactly they did in the end.
The filing points to that friction directly. A Secret Service supervisor was asked about tracking Comey’s phone on his drive back from Washington to North Carolina through an exigency request without a warrant, and wrote that it was a “bad idea.” He said they would need to believe there was an imminent threat to life or limb, then wrote that at the time they did not believe anyone’s life was in immediate danger and that it was legally a bad idea to ping the phone. Another agent agreed, but said the Secret Service might do it anyway. The next day, the supervisor noted that the “#3 guy at DOJ” wanted the cellphone pinged.
That internal record does not answer the key question now: whether the Secret Service actually pinged the phone or only discussed doing so. But it does show how quickly the investigation moved from a post on Instagram to a debate over warrantless tracking, and that is where Comey’s lawyers are trying to push the case. They are not only asking the court to reject the charge. They are asking it to decide whether the government’s methods were lawful enough to survive at all.
