Federal prosecutors fighting to keep criminal charges alive against former FBI Director James Comey are now citing passages from his own novel as evidence he knew exactly what his "86 47" social media post meant, and that it was no innocent political slogan.
In a court filing made this week in the Eastern District of North Carolina, prosecutors drew a direct line between Comey's 2025 thriller FDR Drive and the Instagram post that led to his indictment on two federal counts of threatening President Trump. The novel, released just five days before Comey posted an image of seashells arranged to spell "86 47," describes a fictional "charismatic leader" who uses coded internet messages to incite violence while keeping his own hands clean. Prosecutors told the judge that Comey did in life what his character did in fiction.
The filing landed as Comey's defense team pushes to have the case thrown out, arguing the phrase is nothing more than a common political expression and that the prosecution amounts to political retaliation. A federal judge has not yet ruled on the motion to dismiss, and Comey's trial has been delayed until October 2026 to give his attorneys time to mount constitutional challenges.
The prosecutors' brief quotes two passages from FDR Drive that they say describe Comey's own strategy. In one, a character explains the method of a leader who stirs followers through veiled online messages, as The Independent reported:
"It's where a charismatic leader jacks people up but, through the wonder of the internet, avoids a direct connection to what comes next."
A second passage goes further. The character says of this leader:
"He knows an attack will follow his words, but he closes his eyes so he can say he wasn't part of it."
Prosecutors then used nearly identical language to describe Comey himself, writing in their filing:
"On May 15, 2025, a charismatic leader named James Comey, through the wonder of the internet, posted a coded message to his followers meaning 'kill' or 'get rid of' (a euphemism for 'kill') President Trump."
The deliberate echo was unmistakable. Prosecutors took the phrase "charismatic leader" and "through the wonder of the internet" straight from Comey's novel and applied it to his real-world conduct, arguing the fiction reveals his understanding of how coded incitement works.
The case traces back to May 15, 2025, when Comey posted an Instagram image showing seashells arranged to read "86 47." A federal grand jury indicted him in April 2026 on two counts: knowingly making a threat to take the life of or inflict bodily harm on the president, and knowingly transmitting in interstate commerce a threat to kill the president.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the charges, telling the New York Post that "threatening the life of the president of the United States will never be tolerated by the Department of Justice." The indictment came after an earlier, separate case against Comey, involving charges of false statements and obstruction of justice, was dismissed when a federal judge ruled the interim U.S. Attorney who brought those charges had been improperly appointed.
The meaning of "86" sits at the center of the dispute. Prosecutors cited news reports and a former organized-crime figure who told the FBI that "everybody knew" the term meant "kill." Comey offered a different account to the Secret Service, saying he understood "86" to mean "ditch, dump or replace" and "47" to refer to Trump as the 47th president. His defense attorneys described it as restaurant jargon, a term for a menu item that is no longer available.
The prosecutor who originally secured Comey's indictment has since left the case without public explanation, adding another layer of uncertainty to the proceedings.
Comey's attorneys filed a motion to dismiss in July, calling the indictment a product of presidential grudges rather than legitimate law enforcement. They argued in their filing that the case "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 defense brief was blunt about the underlying phrase. Comey's lawyers wrote that "no reasonable observer would understand the phrase '86 47' to connote violence at all," and that even if the phrase could "implausibly be read to suggest violence, a reasonable observer would still understand Mr. Comey's post as mere political hyperbole, not a true threat," as Breitbart reported.
Prosecutors pushed back hard in their August 18 response, writing that Comey's team had "not come close" to establishing "vindictive and selective prosecution." The filing framed the novel excerpts as a window into Comey's own thinking, a man who understood the mechanics of coded incitement well enough to write fiction about it, then allegedly employed the same technique five days after publication.
Comey, for his part, has maintained his innocence throughout. After the indictment, he posted a video statement on Substack declaring, "I'm still innocent. I'm still not afraid. And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary, so let's go."
Court documents filed by Comey's attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, revealed that the investigation itself faced internal resistance. A mid-level Secret Service supervisor wrote in an email that agents did not believe anyone's life was in danger, raising questions about the legal basis for surveilling Comey. Despite those objections, a top DOJ official directed agents to proceed. On May 16, 2025, one day after the post, agents accessed Comey's phone signal to track his location and followed his vehicle through North Carolina, Just The News reported.
That detail cuts both ways. For the defense, it suggests the government knew from the start that the post was not a genuine safety concern. For prosecutors, it may simply reflect standard caution, agents can disagree with a directive and still carry it out lawfully.
Comey's history with the Trump administration is long and bitter. Appointed FBI director by President Barack Obama, Comey was fired by Trump during his first term, partly over his handling of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails. The firing came while Comey's FBI was also investigating possible Trump-Russia ties, a sequence that fueled years of political warfare between the two men.
The Supreme Court's recent refusal to hear Carter Page's FISA surveillance lawsuit against Comey closed one legal chapter, but this criminal case has opened another far more consequential one.
Comey is one of several prominent Trump critics who have faced federal charges since Trump returned to office. New York Attorney General Letitia James was indicted on unrelated charges, but a federal judge dismissed the case late last year. A subsequent attempt to re-indict her also failed. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, another vocal Trump critic, was indicted and ultimately pleaded guilty to a single charge of willfully retaining national defense information.
Comey's defense team has pointed to these cases as evidence of a broader pattern of politically motivated prosecution. Prosecutors reject that framing entirely, insisting each case stands on its own facts. Whether a federal judge agrees will likely determine whether this case reaches a jury in October, or dies on a constitutional challenge.
Other figures from the Trump-era legal battles have also faced renewed scrutiny. E. Jean Carroll has denied perjury allegations amid a reported DOJ probe, and the House has weighed a criminal referral of former Special Counsel Jack Smith over alleged false testimony to Congress.
Comey deleted the seashell post after public backlash, but the image lives on in a federal indictment and in prosecutors' briefs. So does his novel. The man who spent a career building cases now finds his own words, fictional and otherwise, being used to build one against him. Whether that amounts to justice or overreach, a federal judge will decide. But the irony needs no jury to confirm.