Comey claims DOJ conducted "illegal" surveillance in motion seeking to dismiss charges

Former FBI Director James Comey filed new motions late Tuesday in his effort to toss out federal charges accusing him of threatening President Trump\u0027s by posting a photo of seashells arranged to form the numbers "86 47," casting the indictment as the latest salvo in a yearslong effort to punish him for criticizing the president \u2014 and accusing the government of misconduct.The filing \u2014 accompanied by a 76-page-long spreadsheet listing out all of the insults Mr. Trump and Comey have hurled at each other over the last nine years \u2014 argues the indictment should be dismissed on the grounds of vindictive and selective prosecution. Comey\u0027s lawyers also asked the court to suppress evidence from warrants for Comey\u0027s accounts, and to force the government to disclose the grand jury proceedings that led to his indictment."Here, the government has singled out Mr. Comey for prosecution because President Trump harbors animus toward Mr. Comey and his protected speech, and it has done so in direct response to the President\u0027s urgings and Mr. Comey\u0027s successful motion to dismiss a prior indictment," the former FBI chief\u0027s attorneys argued.\u00a0The Justice Department has denied that Comey is being singled out due to his political views.In the motion to dismiss, Comey also accused the U.S. Secret Service of conducting "illegal electronic surveillance of Mr. Comey at the request of a high-level DOJ official" without a warrant shortly after Comey\u0027s spring 2025 Instagram post.\u00a0Filings submitted by his lawyers show discussions between Secret Service staff about "pinging" Comey\u0027s phone to track its location, which some personnel viewed skeptically, and a request for Verizon to provide location information due to an "emergency" situation. At the time, Comey was set to travel from North Carolina to his Virginia home."At that time we did not believe that anyone\u0027s life was in immediate danger and legally it was a bad idea to ping the phone," an unnamed Secret Service official said in one message.Those details on the surveillance \u2014 along with other allegations about the government\u0027s scramble to investigate Comey \u2014 are from an affidavit filed by Comey\u0027s attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, who cited "substantial discovery provided by the Government."Comey\u0027s legal team is also asking for a Franks hearing, a court proceeding where the judge overseeing his case would determine if the government misled or lied to the magistrate judge who approved search warrants. In this case, the warrants are related to digital accounts belonging to the former FBI director and his wife.The affidavits at the center of those search warrants, Comey\u0027s legal team said, "omitted facts known to the affiant," and "misled the magistrates with material falsehoods, bizarrely insinuating that Mr. Comey\u0027s lawyer (a former U.S. Attorney) and Mr. Comey\u0027s wife had obstructed the government\u0027s investigation."\u00a0Comey\u0027s lawyers wrote that the warrant applications cited a person who knew and spoke to Comey\u0027s wife. In interviews with federal law enforcement, Tuesday\u0027s court filings said, that witness "admitted that they had been estranged from Mr. Comey and had not spoken to him for at least two years," and "made clear their intense bias" against Comey.Again citing the evidence reviewed by Fitzgerald, Comey\u0027s legal team said the witness told law enforcement in both interviews that their first reaction to the "86 47" post was that it was related to restaurant slang that an establishment was out of a menu item, until they listened to an episode of Rudy Giuliani\u0027s podcast.Then, the FBI in September 2025 searched its database for any references to the term "86" in cases that Comey worked on, which an FBI staffer said produced "inconclusive results," according to messages filed in court by Comey\u0027s lawyers.A separate search of the FBI\u0027s file in the case of mob boss John Gambino, whom Comey prosecuted in the 1990s, also turned up no references to the term. After Comey was indicted, Fitzgerald wrote, an FBI agent and a federal prosecutor also interviewed Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, a former member of the Gambino crime family, and asked if Comey ever discussed the term "86" with him. Gravano doubted he would have brought up the term with Comey, though he did say it can mean "to kill."The new slate of court filings came one day after Comey asked U.S. District Judge Louise W. Flanagan, who is overseeing his case, to dismiss the indictment against him on separate grounds. He argued the case against him targets speech protected by the First Amendment, and that the "86 47" phrase at the heart of the indictment is not a true threat against Mr. Trump.Comey was indicted last year in a different case that accused him of lying to Congress in 2020. He and his legal team moved to dismiss that case on similar grounds, but the Virginia federal judge overseeing the case never ruled on the issue. Instead, the judge dismissed it on the grounds that the prosecutor who secured the indictment against him was unconstitutionally appointed to her role as interim U.S. attorney.Comey is set to be arraigned on the two charges of threatening to kill the president on Sept. 30 in New Bern, North Carolina.CBS News has reached out to the Justice Department, the U.S. Secret Service and Comey\u0027s legal team for comment on Tuesday\u0027s filings.The bout of criminal charges against Comey follow a years-long feud between the president and the former FBI leader, dating back to when Mr. Trump fired Comey during his first term in 2017. Since then, Comey has castigated Mr. Trump and called him "morally unfit" to be president, while Mr. Trump has called Comey a "dirty cop" and mused about prosecuting him.In May 2025, Comey posted on Instagram a photo of seashells on a beach arrayed to form the numbers "86 47." He didn\u0027t make his meaning clear, but "ei...

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