{"id":447,"date":"2026-08-12T14:11:44","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T14:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=447"},"modified":"2026-08-12T14:11:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T14:11:44","slug":"the-fbi-proved-comeys-innocence-the-doj-indicted-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalconsumerreportss.com\/?p=447","title":{"rendered":"The FBI proved Comey\u2019s innocence. The DOJ indicted anyway."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

From the outset, the most obvious hurdle to bringing the so-called seashells case against former FBI director James Comey\u2014the case stemming from his May 15, 2025, Instagram post of a photograph of shells on a beach arrayed to form the digits \u201c8647\u201d\u2014was proving that any reasonable, objective observer would consider what he did to constitute a threat on the life of the forty-seventh president.<\/p>\n

Read more Lawfare Daily: Trump\u2019s New Plan for Gaza, with Joel Braunold<\/a><\/p>\n

The second most obvious hurdle was proving that Comey himself, as a subjective matter, regarded what he did to be a violent threat. Because threats are by their nature pure speech, proof of some subjective intent to threaten is in such cases. The constitutional minimum,, is that the defendant act with \u201crecklessness.\u201d But in this case, both federal\u00a0criminal\u00a0offenses with which require much more than that. They require proof that the defendant acted \u201cknowingly and willfully\u201d to threaten to \u201ctake the life of \u2026 or to inflict bodily harm upon,\u201d or \u201cto kill\u201d the president.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

So early on, those who saw\u2014or were ordered to see\u2014what Comey did in a criminal light developed a theory. The theory was that \u201c86\u201d was a widely known term within organized crime syndicates meaning \u201cto kill,\u201d and that anyone who had spent a lifetime in law enforcement, as Comey had, would have known that. <\/p>\n

The stronger form of this theory\u2014and this appears to have become the investigators\u2019 working hypothesis\u2014was that Comey had been provably exposed to the use of \u201c86\u201d as organized crime slang in the course of bringing cases such as United States v. Giovanni Gambino<\/em> in the Southern District of New York. Comey was the lead prosecutor in the 1993 trial of that case, whose lead defendant was the boss of one of the era\u2019s five New York mafia crime families.<\/p>\n

The materials publicly filed in court\u00a0in connection with Comey\u2019s pretrial motions on July 27 and July 28 show that investigators diligently tracked the latter theory down for 11 months\u2014and, basically, disproved it. They scoured FBI files, judicial case files, and trial transcripts, but found no evidence that Comey was actually exposed to the use of such slang. <\/p>\n

Indeed, the FBI found precious little evidence to support even the weaker version of the theory\u2014the speculation that, because such usages were supposedly commonplace, Comey must have been exposed to them. Upon examination, such usages did not, in fact, appear to be commonplace. Nevertheless, on April 28, 2026, federal prosecutors sought and obtained an anyway.<\/p>\n

Then investigators kept<\/em> looking for evidence to back up the prosecution theory. The FBI tracked down two former FBI agents who worked on the Gambino case and even a notorious cooperating witness in that case, Salvatore \u201cSammy the Bull\u201d Gravano, who had admitted involvement in 19 murders. But, again, they found zero direct evidence proving that Comey had ever been exposed to \u201c86\u201d as a slang term meaning \u201cto kill.\u201d <\/p>\n

Eventually, shortly after the indictment, a man who seems to be the ultimate expert stepped forward. But for the defense.<\/p>\n

On July 28, attorneys for Comey submitted a from John Gleeson, a renowned former assistant U.S. attorney and, later, federal judge in the Eastern District of New York, who specialized in organized crime cases as a prosecutor. Gleeson offered his that the theory behind the government\u2019s seashells case was \u201cpreposterous.\u201d After decades of investigating, prosecuting, and presiding over such cases, he wrote, he had never come across usage of \u201c86\u201d to mean \u201cto kill\u201d \u201cin any way, shape, or form.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the seashells case lumbers forward.<\/p>\n

This is the sad account of a shameful and vindictive prosecution, in which high-level Justice Department officials are plowing ahead against all credible evidence to punish an enemy of the president. It doesn\u2019t get worse than this.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a Hot Topic on the Plane\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0 <\/p>\n

On May 15, 2025, Comey and his wife, Patrice, were walking along a beach on Emerald Isle, North Carolina, when he noticed an arrangement of shells forming the digits \u201c8647.\u201d At first Comey thought it was an address, he later told investigators, but then he realized it was a political message. His wife, who was a waitress in her youth, explained to him that \u201c86\u201d was restaurant slang for being \u201cout of something\u201d or \u201cto dump or get rid of an item,\u201d., Comey took a photo of the shells. (All times are Eastern Time.)<\/p>\n

Later, that he post the photo on Instagram. At 3:12 pm,\u00a0she texted Comey a stating what \u201c86\u201d meant:<\/p>\n

In U.S. slang, \u201c86\u201d means to get rid of or to refuse service. It\u2019s often used in restaurants and bars to indicate that an item is out of stock or to bar a customer from being served.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two minutes later, Comey posted the\u00a0photo on Instagram, captioning it, \u201cCool shell formation on my beach walk.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post went viral. Some conservative voices claimed it was a call for violence against the president.<\/p>\n

At 5:52 pm, from an acquaintance the Comeys had not heard from in two or three years. In their recent motions, Comey\u2019s attorneys have referred to this individual as Person-1. To guard this individual\u2019s privacy, they have obscured their gender by using plural pronouns.<\/p>\n

Person-1 criticized Comey\u2019s post. In part,:<\/p>\n

You guys have gone off the deep end over the years with your TDS. \u201c86 47\u201d is a call for violence no matter how you spin it. \u2026 I hope you and Jim goes to jail for his crimes. [XP]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Patrice initially argued with Person-1.\u00a0She sent them a text of an Amazon ad for \u201c8647 Anti-Trump Funny T-shirt,\u201d adding, \u201cSo sorry that you are misunderstanding that some people think Trump is a bad President. There is no call for violence.\u201d (More than a year later, after charges had been brought, Comey\u2019s lawyers would establish, through trial subpoenas, that\u00a0more than 200,000 products had been offered for sale on Amazon between January 2017 and May 15, 2025, bearing the legends \u201c8645,\u201d \u201c8646,\u201d or \u201c8647,\u201d as apparent political commentary. Amazon had received or complaints about those products, its records custodian reported.)<\/p>\n

A few minutes later, however,\u00a0Patrice texted Person-1 again: \u201cNow that you said what you said and I googled and saw the right wing narrative about the numbers, Jim will take down the post.\u201d<\/p>\n

Comey did take it down and, at\u00a06:25 pm,\u00a0sent out a new Instagram message:<\/p>\n

I posted earlier a picture of some shells today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn\u2019t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At 9:05 pm, a U.S. Secret Service agent on his voicemail. Comey returned the message at about 9:15 p.m. They had a short, unrecorded interview and Comey agreed to meet the next afternoon, on May 16, for an in-person interview at the service\u2019s Washington Field Office. reflect Comey\u2019s statements that he \u201cdid not realize the 86 meant anything violent\u201d and he \u201cdidn\u2019t mean anything threatening.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next morning, Trump, who was in Abu Dhabi, gave a lengthy interview on the television program \u201cFox & Friends.\u201d\u00a0With respect to the shells, he said this:<\/p>\n

And [Comey] knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear. Now, he wasn’t very competent, but he was competent enough to know what that meant. \u2026 [H]e\u2019s calling for the assassination of the president.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At 10:33 am, the U.S. Secret Service. \u201cEffective immediately,\u201d agents were instructed to treat \u201c8647\u201d as possible \u201ccoded threat language for \u201ckill the 47th<\/sup> president.\u201d<\/p>\n

12:03 pm, the Secret Service special agent in charge, who was traveling with Trump aboard Air Force One, who would interview Comey if he could get \u201can immediate readout (call)\u201d of the interview. \u201cI am getting lots of questions,\u201d. \u201cIt is a hot topic on the plane and [Trump] is very interested.\u201d<\/p>\n

The interview occurred that evening from 5:50 to 6:34 pm at the Washington Field Office. besides the investigating agents, were the Secret Service\u2019s general counsel, its deputy chief counsel, the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s general counsel, and an assistant U.S. attorney from the Eastern District of Virginia. Comey\u2019s attorney, David Kelley, participated by phone on speaker.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

According to a redacted, Comey said he had interpreted \u201c86\u201d to mean \u201cditch, dump, or replace,\u201d and \u201cviewed the message in a strictly non-violent manner.\u201d He had not perceived that \u201cpeople would have a dark way of taking his message.\u201d He took the message down once his wife told him it was \u201cbeing interpreted by some as a call to violence.\u201d (Comey\u2019s attorney Kelley, in a, asserted that one of the senior officials present \u201cpersonally communicated to me his embarrassment at the amount of attention being paid to the matter.\u201d)<\/p>\n

of the interview to the special agent in charge aboard Air Force One.<\/p>\n

At 11:12 pm, the Secret Service discontinued the new policy, announced just that morning, of treating \u201c8647\u201d as a coded threat. \u201cAs we figured,\u201d a senior official wrote, \u201cthis is a lot and we can\u2019t, nor should be expected to document all of these references to 8647. We should go back to business as usual, unless someone is inciting violence along with those numbers or adding egregious and threatening language.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few minutes later, the assistant to the special agent in charge on the president\u2019s detail to the investigatory team, whose tone suggested that he thought the matter had been put to bed. \u201c[W]e were tasked with coming together to put out a fire,\u201d he wrote. \u201cYou all contributed . . . to this issue being resolved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Giuliani: “I Didn’t Know What it Meant”<\/strong><\/p>\n

The next morning, however, the investigators continued interviewing witnesses. with Patrice Comey, beginning at 11:11 am. She told them that, based on her waitressing experience, 86 meant \u201cout of something\u201d or \u201cget rid of an item in a nonviolent way,\u201d such as \u201cwe\u2019re 86 on broccoli.\u201d She also related her exchange with Person-1.<\/p>\n

In the early afternoon, agents had a, and arranged for a longer, recorded, in-person interview on May 21. The records for the two are not completely consistent.<\/p>\n

According to an agent\u2019s Person-1 \u201cimmediately perceived the term \u201986 47\u2019 as a call to get rid of, in a violent way, or even to assassinate President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was not what he said in the longer recorded interview, however, according to portions\u00a0quoted in the affidavit of Comey attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. (.) According to Fitzgerald,\u00a0Person-1 said:\u00a0 <\/p>\n

[M]y first initial thought was personally, I thought that the only way that I really heard 86 in my life before is when I used to work in restaurants in college and its like \u2026 out of something on the menu.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Person-1 then remarked that, as they thought about it more, and considered the fact that peaceful means of removing Trump, such as impeachment, were unavailable as a practical matter, they concluded that the shell array was a \u201ccall to violence.\u201d In particular, they referenced having heard a podcast by Rudolph Giuliani the night before reacting to the Instagram post in which Giuliani had claimed, Person-1 related, that Comey worked on \u201cspecific mob cases\u201d where<\/p>\n

they had several logs of videotapes and stuff and phone calls saying, you know, we gotta 86 this guy\u00a0 . . . That\u2019s why I eventually reached out because I thought there was no shot in hell that this man who spent his life doing all the things that he\u2019s done up to this point, prosecuting mob families in New York, \u2026 there\u2019s no way he didn\u2019t know how that was at least going to be interpreted by most people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

During this interview, Person-1 also evinced personal hostility toward Comey,\u00a0according to Fitzgerald\u2019s affidavit. They said they blocked Patrice\u2019s telephone number after their May 15 text exchange; they said they objected to Comey\u2019s son-in-law having prosecuting crimes stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot; they expressed regret that they couldn\u2019t offer the agents \u201csomething more\u201d to make the Comeys \u201cface consequences for this;\u201d and they reiterated that \u201cI hope Jim goes to jail\u201d for the \u201ccrimes he committed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Person-1\u2019s reference to Giuliani evidently related to\u00a0the May 20 episode of \u201cAmerica\u2019s Mayor Live,\u201d where Giuliani had, indeed, claimed that Comey worked on cases where \u201c86\u201d had been used to mean \u201ckill.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in a separate\u00a0interview that same day, on Newsmax\u2014as Fitzgerald\u2019s declaration of July, 28, 2026 would later observe\u2014Giuliani admitted (at timestamp 2:35) that he himself had not understood \u201c86\u201d to mean kill until he was \u201ceducated\u201d on its meaning by his \u201cboys:\u201d <\/p>\n

I\u2019m gonna tell you the truth. If I saw it, I didn\u2019t know what it meant until my boys told me. If I saw that [i.e., the shells on the beach], I would have rubbed it off with my feet. I thought it was a license plate number or something. Or somebody\u2019s PIN number.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was a telling admission from a man whose greatest claim to fame, prior to his role as mayor on Sept. 11, 2001, was having, as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, led the office that won Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act convictions in 1986 in the so-called Mafia Commission trial, targeting the heads of all five New York City organized crime families. Giuliani was acknowledging that he himself had never heard of this supposedly widely known mobster slang until his sons explained it to him shortly after Comey\u2019s post, some 40 years later.<\/p>\n

On May 21, 2025, that, as he put it, \u201cI\u2019ve been ordered to open this case in EDNC.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Fall 2025, the U.S. attorney\u2019s office in Eastern North Carolina had begun trying to assemble proof that, as Giuliani and Person-1 assumed, Comey had been exposed to mobsters\u2019 use of \u201c86\u201d as a synonym for \u201ckill.\u201d On Sep. 18, for \u201cany records,\u201d including \u201ctraining records,\u201d or \u201cany cases or investigations at any level\u201d that involved use of the slang term \u201c86\u201d or \u201ceighty-six\u201d and that would have been \u201cassociated with former FBI Director James Comey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Agent five days later that the searches produced \u201cinconclusive results.\u201d He continued: \u201cAdditionally, the searcher was unable to identify if the subject would have had access or been exposed to any potential files meeting the search perimeters [sic].\u201d So far as the letter reveals, the search did not unearth a single pertinent reference to \u201c86\u201d\u2014whether or not linkable to Comey.<\/p>\n

On Nov. 19, 2025, FBI case agent April Floyd the case file for United States v. Gambino<\/em>. That case was brought in 1988 and went to trial in 1993, with Comey as lead prosecutor. She explained to the New York office that she was looking for evidence showing that the phrase \u201ceighty-six\u201d was associated with \u201cputting a hit on someone for them to be murdered was revealed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New York office that its review of the file \u201cdid not yield any relevant returns.\u201d <\/p>\n

Read more Lawfare Daily: Grokipedia\u2019s Deafening Silence with Ren\u00e9e DiResta<\/a><\/p>\n

On April 2, Attorney General\u00a0Pam Bondi was fired, reportedly, in part, for not being aggressive enough in pursuing Trump\u2019s enemies. Nine days later,\u00a0Fox News reported that Trump had huddled with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche the night of Bondi\u2019s firing, discussing who should be Bondi\u2019s successor, and commenting, \u201cHere\u2019s your audition.\u201d In response to the article, the Department of Justice told Fox that, while Trump spoke to Blanche after Bondi\u2019s firing, he informed him that he would only serve as acting attorney general until a successor was decided upon.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

On April 13, FBI agents interviewed Person-1\u2014now 11 months after his Secret Service interviews. The of the 27-minute recorded interview is sealed, but Fitzgerald, Comey\u2019s attorney,\u00a0quoted portions in his declaration of July 28. <\/p>\n

\n

But when I saw [the Instagram post], I quickly went through in my head like the term \u201c86\u201d to me that I am familiar with in my own life is in a restaurant right like when \u201csomething\u2019s off the menu\u201d\u2026 it\u2019s \u201c86\u2019d\u201d \u2026 you don\u2019t serve it any more but pretty quickly my mind went to\u2026 I know he wasn\u2019t trying to take Trump off the menu but if he was, like what would that mean, right, how would you get rid of \u201c47\u201d right now with both houses of Congress or Congress and the Senate being under Republican control? It couldn\u2019t have been impeachment, it couldn\u2019t have been all these things\u2026<\/p>\n

So like I just thought that there was a clear implication, whether a joke or whether you know trying to be sly that my perception was very quickly that well certainly Jim, coming up from you know his time in the Southern District of New York, being the district attorney there and prosecuting mob boss cases \u2026 that we have to know what that means and so it had to be something along those lines\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The FBI agent then asked Person-1 if their reference to the use of \u201c86\u201d in mob cases came from Giuliani\u2019s podcast. He responded: \u201cI don\u2019t recall that specifically[,] but [it] also could be where what I just said about where 86 came from \u2026\u00a0 I believe that is true if I said it but I don\u2019t remember that specifically.\u201d<\/p>\n

During this interview, Person-1 made a comment potentially relevant to credibility.\u00a0They mentioned that they\u2019d left a prior career after they went to \u201crehab.\u201d Agents asked no follow-up questions about what Person-1 meant.<\/p>\n

, investigators resumed searching for proof that \u201c86\u201d was an organized crime term and that Comey knew it. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Phil Aubart and the FBI case agent requested a keyword search of transcripts of the 1993 United States v. Gambino<\/em> trial.<\/p>\n

By April 23, they had: Zero responsive references for \u201ceighty-six\u201d and its variants.<\/p>\n

By April 27,. Still nothing.<\/p>\n

At some point, according to Fitzgerald\u2019s affidavit,\u00a0they also searched a transcript of United States v. Salerno<\/em>\u2014the mafia commission case. (During Giuliani\u2019s May 20, 2025 podcast\u2014the one Person-1 listened to\u2014Giuliani had claimed that usages of \u201c86\u201d to mean \u201ckill\u201d had surfaced at the Salerno trial.) Agents found no pertinent references.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, on April 28, prosecutors sought and obtained an against Comey. It alleged that by posting the seashells photograph on Instagram, Comey had \u201cknowingly and willfully [made] a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States,\u201d and had also \u201cknowingly and willfully [transmitted] in interstate and foreign commerce a communication that contained a threat to kill the President.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gravano: Ask Gleeson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite obtaining an indictment, prosecutors seemed to recognize that they could never prove their case as matters stood. So investigators resumed their efforts to prove that \u201c86\u201d was organized crime lingo and that Comey knew it. Agents looked for surviving FBI agents who had worked on the Gambino case, finding two. They also started tracking down the notorious cooperating witness in the case, Gravano. In addition to having admitted 19 murders when he pleaded guilty to racketeering in 1992,\u00a0Gravano had admitted bribing a juror at mobster John Gotti\u2019s first trial, which ended in an acquittal. After finishing a prison term in 1995 and then leaving Witness Protection, Gravano had been convicted in 2002 on new federal and state narcotics charges. He was released in 2017 and was now on parole.<\/p>\n

with one of the former agents on the Gambino case, who was retired but still doing contract work for the bureau. According to Floyd\u2019s report, this former agent said he \u201cwas familiar with the term \u201886\u2019 and used it and heard others use it throughout his life\u201d but had \u201cnever understood the term \u201886\u2019 to mean to kill.\u201d He did not recall \u201cany instance\u201d of organized crime \u201csubjects or sources\u201d using the term that way.<\/p>\n

Floyd then asked the retired agent about Gravano. The latter \u201ccautioned\u201d Floyd about Gravano\u2019s \u201creliability,\u201d if she was contemplating calling him as a witness. It appears that he then explained the reason for his concerns, but that line has been redacted from the public version of Floyd\u2019s report.<\/p>\n

who also worked on the Gambino case. This individual, who was still an agent, described himself as \u201cthe last surviving member\u201d of the unit, since disbanded, which had been tasked with investigating the Gambino crime family. So far as the unredacted portions of the investigative report reflect, the agent offered nothing of value, and simply promised: \u201cto review some of his old cases and source reporting documents.\u201d<\/p>\n

The defense\u2019s filings reveal that around the same time as these interviews, the agents \u2014including Google AI and ChatGPT\u2014to try to establish that \u201c86\u201d was widely used mob lingo.<\/p>\n

The tools reported some evidence of such usage, but not extensive. Asked whether \u201c86 has ever been utilized to describe to kill?,\u201d\u00a0 It is \u201cprimarily known as being restaurant slang for being out of an item or as a bar term for ejecting a rowdy patron.\u201d The term\u2019s violent meaning did appear in two slang dictionaries, the tool reported, but it also noted\u2014correctly\u2014that the Merriam-Webster dictionary \u201cdoes not officially enter this sense because it is relatively recent and lacks widespread use compared to its hospitality meanings.\u201d<\/p>\n

This that the supposed origin of the term that Trump had referred to in a\u00a0Truth Social post the day after the indictment was an \u201curban legend.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is an urban legend that the term originated from mobsters burying bodies \u201c8 miles out and 6 feet under.\u201d While experts at the Mob Museum state there is no documented evidence that the term began with organized crime, it has been used metaphorically to mean \u201celiminate\u201d in crime fiction and film.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other stray references, \u201ckilled in action\u201d by an Army specialist interviewed by the New York Times<\/em> in 1991; to mean \u201ckill\u201d by a white supremacist, according to an unidentified 1990 article about his trial; and, likewise, to mean \u201ckill\u201d in a 2021 crime novel by James Ellroy.<\/p>\n

On May 8, case agent Floyd spoke by phone with Gravano, the cooperating witness in the 1993 Gambino trial, and set up an in-person interview. Among all the leads they\u2019d tracked down, Gravano came the closest to corroborating the investigators\u2019 theory\u2014but it was not very close., Gravano asserted that \u201c86\u201d was, indeed, organized crime lingo for killing someone. He opined \u201cthat based on the positions Comey held and the interactions Comey had with those involved with organized crime, there was no way he did not know that the term \u201886\u2019 was used in the context of killing someone.\u201d At the same time, Gravano said, he was \u201cfairly certain it would be difficult to find the term \u201986\u2019 documented in law enforcement\/FBI files because members of the organized crime families refrained from using\u201d such terms \u201cin the presence of law enforcement officers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Investigators conducted a 25-minute, in-person, recorded interview with Gravano on May 13. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Aubart flew to Phoenix to attend in person., but Comey attorney Fitzgerald quoted portions in his declaration.\u00a0Fitzgerald wrote:<\/p>\n

\u2026 Gravano said that \u201c86\u201d generally means to \u201cget rid of\u201d and to him, as a \u201cgangster,\u201d it means \u201cto kill.\u201d \u2026\u00a0 Gravano did not recall discussing the term \u201c86\u201d with Mr. Comey during the Gambino trial or meetings in preparation for the trial. \u2026 Gravano noted that \u201cit certainly wouldn\u2019t be brought up by me.\u201d \u2026 When asked for names of prosecutors who would be good for the government team to ask, Gravano described John Gleeson as a former prosecutor and judge who was \u201cbrilliant.\u201d He added that an opinion \u201ccoming out of his mouth would be unbelievable.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s unclear whether investigators ever did reach out to Gleeson, as Gravano urged.<\/p>\n

But once Gleeson heard about the seashells indictment and the theory behind it, Gleeson, on his own, offered his services, according to. He reached out to one of Comey\u2019s daughters, who was then working at a Manhattan law firm.<\/p>\n

In his affidavit,\u00a0Gleeson explained that he and Comey \u201care not friends and never were.\u201d Comey had been a prosecutor in Manhattan, which is in the Southern District of New York, while Gleeson prosecuted cases in Brooklyn, in the Eastern District of New York. They were, therefore, rivals, in a sense, sometimes competing for the same evidence and disagreeing over strategy. In one instance, a \u201cserious disagreement\u201d between them had to be settled at the highest levels of the Justice Department. At the time Gleeson reached out to Comey\u2019s daughter this year, he wrote, he had not communicated with Comey since 1993, so far as he could remember.<\/p>\n

Gleeson began prosecuting mobsters in 1985, in the case of United States v. Aniello Dellacroce<\/em>. It was a case against the then head of the Gambino crime family and nine associates, including John Gotti, then a captain. Over the next several years, until he became a federal judge in 1994,\u00a0Gleeson personally tried 13 mob-related cases, including a second trial of Gotti, and oversaw the prosecutions of about 100 other mafia defendants. (In his May 20, 2025, podcast, Giuliani also referenced \u201cthe Gotti trial\u201d as an example of a case in which \u201c86\u201d was supposedly used to mean \u201cto kill.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Once Gleeson became a federal judge,\u00a0he presided over still more organized crime trials, including the trial of Genevese family captain Michael Coppola in 2009 and that of two other organized crime figures in 2014. In 2022,\u00a0Gleeson wrote a book about the Gotti trials.<\/p>\n

In his\u00a0declaration, Gleeson explained that gangsters often expect their phones to be wire-tapped and, therefore, usually do not speak freely in those conversations. The place to catch them speaking candidly, he wrote, was on \u201cbugs\u201d\u2014electronic surveillance devices planted in locations where gangsters hang out. During the two Gotti trials, for instance, multiple court-authorized bugs were planted at notorious Gambino family hangouts, including the Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry Street in Manhattan and at the Bergin Hunt & Fish Club in Ozone Park, Queens.<\/p>\n

Gleeson listened to many hours of tapes from those bugs,\u00a0he recounted in his declaration filed in the seashell case, and also spent more than 500 hours debriefing cooperating witnesses in the course of building these cases.<\/p>\n

In his experience, he wrote, the most common slang term gangsters used for \u201cto kill,\u201d by far, was \u201cwhack.\u201d Sometimes, but not as often, they used \u201cclip.\u201d Some individual gangsters, including Gotti, employed euphemisms unique to them, like \u201cpiece of work.\u201d<\/p>\n

What about \u201c86\u201d\u2014the term that lies at the heart of the case against Comey? In his affidavit (whose paragraphs are numbered),\u00a0Gleeson writes:<\/p>\n

\n

36. The claim that \u201886\u2019 is mafia jargon for \u2018kill\u2019 is preposterous. If it weren\u2019t made in the context of seeking to deprive a man of his liberty, it would be laughable.<\/p>\n

37. I have never come into contact with a single recorded conversation where a mafia member uses \u201886\u2019 in any way, shape, or form, let alone to refer to killing or murder. Nor have I come into contact with any such reference to \u201886\u2019 in my thousands of hours of debriefings and conversations with cooperating witnesses in mafia cases.<\/p>\n

38. In short, in my expert opinion, there is literally no support for the central allegation on which the case rests. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On July 27, would understand the phrase \u201886 47\u2019 to connote violence at all\u2014let alone to threaten that Mr. Comey would commit violence against the President.\u201d That motion is distinct from a separate, which was filed the next day.<\/p>\n

The \u201cno reasonable observer\u201d motion argues that the indictment, on its face, does not state a crime. The motion relies on the benign dictionary definitions of \u201c86,\u201d the benign context of the post, and other \u201ccommon sense\u201d reasoning that does not require looking outside the four corners of the indictment. It does not<\/em>\u2014and legally probably cannot<\/em>\u2014rely on the Gleeson affidavit, which introduces new facts that the government might contest by, for instance, calling their own expert witnesses, such as Gravano. Normally, contested facts must await trial to be resolved.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, after receiving the Gleeson declaration, prosecutors of good judgment and good will\u2014who were not worried about losing their jobs\u2014would drop this case.<\/p>\n

Do Comey\u2019s prosecutors envision a trial at which ex-gangster Gravano will serve as their star witness, speculating that Comey must have known and intended a violent interpretation of \u201c86\u201d? And will prosecutors now go forward with such a strategy, knowing that former prosecutor and retired judge Gleeson\u2014whom Gravano himself advised them to consult as the ultimate expert\u2014has volunteered to serve as Comey\u2019s expert? And that Gleeson would testify that he had never come across, \u201cin any way, shape, or form,\u201d during his decades of investigating and prosecuting mobsters or presiding over their trials, the usage of \u201c86\u201d that prosecutors are pressing?<\/p>\n

At such a trial, there could be no hope of a conviction. And if a conviction somehow came to pass, it would be a manifest miscarriage of justice.<\/p>\n

Read more A Senate committee voted to hold Fauci in contempt. Now what?<\/a><\/p>\n

Prosecutors need to end this horrendous abuse of the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the seashells case, the FBI searched for proof that gangsters used \u201c86\u201d to mean \u201ckill\u201d and that Comey knew it. Now an expert says their theory is \u201cpreposterous.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-executive-branch"],"yoast_head":"\nThe FBI proved Comey\u2019s innocence. 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