Seashells and Double Standards: The 8647 Prosecution Exposes Everything Wrong With Trump's DOJ

On April 28, 2026, a federal grand jury indicted former FBI Director James Comey. Not for obstruction. Not for espionage. Not for anything involving classified documents or abuse of power.

For seashells.

Comey posted a photo on Instagram of shells arranged on a North Carolina beach spelling out "8647." He deleted it quickly. Didn't matter. The Trump Justice Department had already decided those four digits constituted a federal crime, specifically a threat to harm or kill the President of the United States.

Trump's argument, stated publicly and without apparent embarrassment, is that "86" is mob slang for assassination. Therefore 8647 equals a death threat. A former FBI director is facing federal charges because he went to the beach.

Let's sit with that for a second.

That is Joe Biden, the 46th President of the United States, bound and gagged in the bed of a pickup truck. Trump posted this on Truth Social in March 2024. His campaign's defense when pressed was essentially: that's just a truck, he didn't make the sticker. The man who is now arguing that seashells constitute a criminal threat shared an image of a hogtied president and called it a non-issue.

And it didn't stop there. Conservative activist Jack Posobiec, a known Trump ally, openly posted "8646" on social media. Same construction. Same logic. 86 the 46th president. By Trump's own definition of what those numbers mean, that's a death threat against a sitting president. Biden's Justice Department investigated nothing. Charged nobody.

Because the First Amendment covers political speech even when that speech is ugly, aggressive, and uncomfortable. That's the entire point of the First Amendment.

That protection apparently expired on January 20, 2025.

What we are watching is not law enforcement. It is a targeted prosecution of a political enemy using legal machinery that was built to protect everyone. Comey has a complicated history with Trump. He ran the Russia investigation, he was fired for it, and Trump has never forgiven him. This indictment has nothing to do with seashells and everything to do with settling scores.

The pattern is not subtle. Trump pardoned over 1,500 January 6 defendants on day one and is now pushing a $1.8 billion taxpayer funded compensation package for the people who attacked the Capitol. At the same time his DOJ is prosecuting a man for a beach photo. The insurrectionists get a check. The guy with the shells gets a grand jury.

If "86" means what Trump says it means, he threatened a sitting president and his own supporters cheered while doing it. If it doesn't mean that, if it's political expression, restaurant slang, a symbol of opposition, then Comey committed no crime and this prosecution is an abuse of power.

It cannot be both. Pick one.

The number they're trying to criminalize just became a masthead.

This is what fascism looks like. Not in a history book. Right here. Right now. This is what despots do when they run out of arguments: they weaponize the courts against anyone who refuses to bow.