ClownAss DOJ Reduced To Quoting James Comey’s Novel As Evidence In ‘8647’ Case

from the i’m-just-surprised-the-remaining-prosecutors-can-read dept

The first attempted revenge prosecution of former FBI director James Comey has gone nowhere. Whatever the DOJ didn’t botch directly was undone by Trump’s persistent refusal to adhere to the rules of political appointments.

The second attempted prosecution of James Comey isn’t going any better. The Trump DOJ willfully pretended an Instagram photo taken by Comey of seashells arranged to read “8647” was a “true threat.” As everyone but the deliberately ignorant knows, “86” generally means getting rid of something. In bar parlance, this means cutting someone off or kicking them out of the bar. In restaurant parlance, it means a menu option is no longer available.

This prosecution is even more shaky than the last one — the one where the administration pretended being misleading during congressional testimony was a criminal act worthy of indictment, even though everybody (and especially Trump appointees) do it all the time. Since the government couldn’t find a universal definition of “86” that meant “kill,” it had to rely on anything from AI prompts to motherfucking Mafia hitman/rat Sammy “The Bull” Gravano to press its case.

Now that it’s floundering again, the DOJ has decided it should double-down on the floundering. Comey is still fighting to have the case dismissed, while also seeking to hold the government accountable for its vindictive prosecution. The DOJ is hoping to hold this together long enough that everyone involved won’t be immediately dismissed for failing to accomplish the impossible.

The end result is that the DOJ’s arguments are more desperate and less minimally coherent. In its latest filing, the DOJ has decided to throw the First Amendment — along with any remaining logic — under the bus.

You read that headline correctly. The DOJ is now seriously (and while under oath) quoting Comey’s 2025 “legal thriller” in a last-ditch attempt to connect seashells with inciting violence against Trump. It has to be read to be believed. I won’t make you suffer through Comey’s sub-Grisham writing. But the DOJ will! Here’s the DOJ Vengeance Squad [PDF] attempting to turn protected expression into evidence of criminal activity:

On May 15, 2025, Comey was staying at a beachfront residence in Emerald Isle, North Carolina. Comey’s novel “FDR Drive” was only five days from public release. As Publisher’s Weekly described the novel, and as posted on Comey’s Instagram, the protagonist is a federal prosecutor “trying to take down Samuel Buchanan, a far-right media personality with a popular podcast.” FDR Drive, Publisher’s Weekly, https://perma.cc/6V82-HQ9A4. [Exhibit 1] The prosecutor “believes Buchanan went far beyond the protection of the First Amendment when he singled out his enemies by name and suggested ‘something should be done’ about them. His fans have obliged, killing or grievously injuring some of his foes.” Id. The novel itself describes the “stochastic terrorism” theory of Buchanan’s offense at length:

Sean nodded. “It’s where a charismatic leader jacks people up but, through the wonder of the internet, avoids a direct connection to what comes next. Stochastic is a term from statistics that means you can estimate the likelihood of something happening, even if you can’t predict who will do it and when and where.”

The words in bold are quoted directly from Comey’s novel. This is only part of it. The DOJ filing quotes Comey’s novel at length. If you want to read more, you can. But considering the argument being made by the DOJ, combined with what I assume is general disinterest in reading Comey’s fictional works, this is the part that matters… at least to the DOJ.

Several paragraphs of subpar political thriller later, the DOJ attempts to connect the dots… or at least the seashells and its pull quote from a book that was published “only days later.” 2+2=CRIME! says the DOJ:

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.

Stupid and dangerous: that’s the DOJ we have now. But this is deliberate stupidity — prosecutors closing themselves in hopes of scoring a pair of poorly fitting Florsheims or landing a spot on Trump’s personal legal team post-2028, where anyone sufficiently devoid of personal morality or professional ethics will be rewarded with hundreds of billable hours.

From there, the DOJ continues with its conspiracy theory concoction, claiming there’s no way anyone but Comey could have arranged the “8647” seashells, even though it happened “four miles” away from Comey’s beachfront residence. The filing then cites “evidence” it has had for awhile, hoping that the court will draw inferences that can’t plausibly be implied by the DOJ:

In any event, at 3:12 pm, Comey’s wife sent him a screenshot including what appeared to have been a cropped definition of “U.S. English slang” indicating that “86” means “to get rid of or refuse service.” [Exhibit 5]. Two minutes later, at 3:14 pm, Comey posted a picture of the seashells on his Instagram account with the caption “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

If that hurt your head, prepare to bleed out:

There is no serious dispute that an objective viewer of Comey’s post could read it to mean “Kill President Trump.”

If that were true, the DOJ wouldn’t be in court hoping to salvage its case by suffering through Comey novels and trying to turn a hasty seashell-based joke into a federal crime.

But probably the stupidest thing about this is that the citation of Comey’s novel ignores the context. That section is about the government dreaming up a way to punish someone for something that — on its own — isn’t actually a criminal act. The main characters (government prosecutors) discuss the assassination of Thomas Becket in 1170 AD at the (inferred) urging of King Henry II. Then they arrive at this conclusion/miscarriage of justice:

The room was quiet for a moment before Nora said, “But that’s okay. I don’t think we need to base his intent on the perfect-attack-record thing. I think we just argue that he had to know his words would result in the attacks. He may not have known the identity of his knights, but he knew they were out there and would act on his words. So he just shouted that they were—what were the king’s words? ‘Miserable drones and traitors’?—if they didn’t get rid of the people he named. He knew what his knights would do. That should be enough to prove he intended it to happen.

Comey’s novel is a similarly unconcerned with First Amendment rights as Trump’s DOJ. If this hadn’t been written by a former prosecutor and FBI director, someone might have stepped in to shut this shit down. The incredible irony is that the DOJ is doing exactly what the characters in Comey’s book did while simultaneously insisting the man who wrote this book was trying to pull a King Henry II against Donald Trump even though stuff Comey wrote himself made it clear doing so might give the government a path to convict him of threatening the president.

What’s most amazing about all of this is that DOJ prosecutors apparently have the time and discretion to actually read James Comey’s fictional works and parse them for possible “evidence.” I can’t imagine doing this for free. And I think I might even have a problem doing this for pay. But here we are, watching the DOJ claim that Comey knew what he was doing because this one time a bunch of people who never existed said words that Comey put in their mouths. Ridiculous.

Filed Under: 8647, doj, donald trump, james comey, true threats, trump admininstration, vindictive prosecution