The move to charge former FBI Director James Comey with threatening the president with a picture of seashells shifted into overdrive earlier this month after President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi and named Todd Blanche as the acting replacement, according to two people familiar with the effort. 

Then-Attorney General Bondi had pushed her team to keep pursuing Virginia-based charges against Comey for lying to Congress, concluding that case was significantly stronger than potential charges based in North Carolina that he threatened to kill or harm Trump. The threat case appeared to have largely been put on indefinite hold a few months after May 2025, when Comey posted a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach arranged to spell out “8647” and investigators first opened a case to consider if his Instagram posting constituted a criminal threat of harm.

In late March, before Bondi’s firing, Justice Department aides were urging that they delay charging Comey on the presidential threat case and wait until the Senate confirmed interim U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle to be the permanent head of the federal prosecutors’ office in the Eastern District of North Carolina, according to a person familiar with the discussions. 

But after Bondi was out, and new acting Attorney General Blanche sought to win Trump’s appointment to the job permanently, the “seashells” case gained new steam, the people said. Blanche’s aides instructed Boyle to seek a grand jury indictment of Comey and he and a relatively junior prosecutor obtained one in the Eastern District on April 28.

A Justice Department official denied that Bondi had delayed or slow-walked the Comey case, saying the investigation had begun a year ago.

“This Department of Justice has always taken threats cases seriously. We pursue charges as soon as prosecutors and agents believe the evidence supports the charges.” a DOJ spokesperson told MS NOW.

The Trump Justice Department’s reliance on interim U.S. attorneys has been a legal vulnerability for multiple prosecutions of people Trump has dubbed his enemies, including Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. The DOJ had suffered a setback when a federal judge dismissed the original false statements charges against Comey in the Eastern District of Virginia, ruling that the interim U.S. attorney was illegally appointed and had signed the charges alone. A federal rule says the attorney general may only appoint a U.S. attorney on an interim basis for a period of 120 days without Senate confirmation. 

Liz Oyer, the Justice Department’s former pardon attorney, said Wednesday in a social media post, “If the FBI or the Secret Service had believed this was a true threat to kill the president, surely they would have not waited a year to arrest Comey.” 

She added that legal experts have dubbed the seashells prosecution “the dumbest case in the history of the Justice Department,” and also disputed Blanche’s and FBI Director Kash Patel’s public claims that this was a complicated case investigators have been steadily pursuing. 

In a press conference Tuesday announcing the new indictment, Patel said the FBI had been investigating the case for the past “nine, 10, 11 months.”

Former federal prosecutors and Secret Service officials have pointed out that federal agents felt no urgency to arrest Comey as a dangerous threat to Trump in the spring and summer of 2025, which is the norm in a presidential threat case. The FBI had done some basic groundwork and evidence collection on the seashells posting after Comey returned from his beach vacation in North Carolina and Secret Service agents had interviewed Comey about his intent, the two people said, but did not arrest or charge him then.

That timeline roughly aligns with the DOJ’s investigation into Comey’s alleged false statements to Congress. That case was dismissed not just because Lindsey Halligan, the then-interim U.S. attorney, was found unlawfully appointed, but also because Halligan had presented that case to the grand jury by herself and her name was the lone signature on the indictment. 

This case has similarities but also key differences. Bondi appointed Ellis Boyle interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina on Aug. 7, 2025, and he was sworn in by his father, U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle. Ellis Boyle has since been nominated to the position but has not yet received Senate confirmation. He continues to serve on an interim basis. Questions remain about whether he is legally appointed because he has served on an interim basis for more than 120 days without Senate confirmation and does not appear to have been appointed by the judges in the district. 

Whether he is serving lawfully, however, should not make a difference in the new case against Comey. While Halligan’s unlawful appointment resulted in a dismissal, history is unlikely to repeat itself here because Boyle’s name is not the lone signature on this new indictment. 

The indictment was signed by Matthew Petracca, an assistant U.S. attorney who has worked for a short time as a federal prosecutor. Before joining the Department of Justice, he was elected as a Republican to his local city council and practiced family law in New Jersey. 

Boyle, the interim U.S. attorney, had worked for two years as a federal prosecutor before he served as a state government appointee, a lawyer and deputy secretary at the North Carolina Department of Public Safety, which oversaw state prisons and state law enforcement and probation agencies. 

While he has legal experience, many top federal prosecutors serve far more than two years in the office and often in a supervisor role before assuming the top leadership position. He also worked in the Civil Division of the Eastern District of North Carolina, trying cases involving negligence and medical malpractice claims for personal injuries, as well as bankruptcy cases. He has limited experience prosecuting criminal cases.   

He now oversees an office that has previously played a part in the DOJ’s criminal pursuit against Comey. When several career prosecutors declined to participate in the Eastern District of Virginia’s criminal case against the former FBI director, the Justice Department tapped two prosecutors from the Eastern District of North Carolina to assist. Those two prosecutors represented the government alongside the interim U.S. attorney, who has since been found unlawfully appointed, for all the proceedings in the short-lived first case against Comey. Both those prosecutors appear to have left the U.S. Attorney’s Office in North Carolina for private practice earlier this year. They are not affiliated with this new case. 

Boyle’s father, Terrence Boyle, is a respected and conservative federal judge in the same district in Eastern North Carolina, a Reagan appointee who has served there for more than four decades. Born and raised in New Jersey, he got his undergraduate degree at Brown University and then graduated from American University law school, but then worked alongside his father-in-law Tom Ellis to help elect conservative TV commentator Jesse Helms in 1972. He then worked as Helms’ counsel. 

He relocated to eastern North Carolina with his wife, and with Helms’ help, President Ronald Reagan later nominated Boyle to the federal bench in 1984. A member of the conservative Federalist Society, Terrence Boyle remains an active judge on the bench, based out of Elizabeth City, North Carolina. He is not the judge overseeing Comey’s case and would likely have to recuse himself from any cases his son prosecutes.

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