Comey seashell – James Comey, the former FBI director, says the latest federal indictment over seashell photos is part of a broader effort to punish and deter officials who cross Donald Trump. In an interview outside his Virginia home, Comey described a disorienting experience
For James Comey, the disruption didn’t stop when the courtroom threw out the last case.
He had planned to meet on the first day of May. but delayed at the last minute after he learned he was being “reindicted” for photographing seashells on a beach. A few weeks later. the former FBI director rescheduled—still outdoors—at the Old Angler’s Inn. a historic roadside pub just across the Potomac River from his Virginia home. The setting felt like something from his public life at rest. But he came into the meeting with the weight of another legal fight already pressing on the calendar.
Comey’s history with Washington is well known: as deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration. he squared off against Dick Cheney and senior White House aides over where to draw the line on warrantless wiretaps and secret torture. In 2016. as FBI director. he infuriated Democrats when he gave a lone-wolf-style press conference announcing Hillary Clinton. then the Democratic nominee for president. had very likely broken the law by discussing classified work in her private emails—without charging her. Months later. on the eve of that election. he returned to announce the FBI had found yet more emails and would reopen its investigation. a move that may have helped elect Donald Trump.
When Comey refused to pledge loyalty to Trump and drop the investigation into Russian interference in the election. Trump fired him. Their feud turned public and personal. and later—during Trump’s second term—Comey became the president’s number-one target for retribution. Last September. Trump’s Justice Department indicted Comey for lying to Congress about whether he authorized leaks related to the Russia probe. That indictment was promptly tossed out by a federal court. Then in April. the administration charged Comey with threatening to kill the president. tied to a photo of menacing seashells arranged as “8647. ” which he explained as “get rid of Trump.”.
Comey said the new case has about as much chance of surviving a day in court as I—tied up in the question of survivability at the time of his comments—becoming chief justice.
All of this is happening while Comey tries to put political life behind him. Since 2023, he has pursued a career as a prolific writer of legal thrillers in the Scott Turow vein. His latest novel, Red Verdict, is his fourth featuring the fictional prosecutor Nora Carleton. Carleton works in the same U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan that Comey once led. Comey also brought up that his daughter. Maurene. was a top prosecutor there until Trump fired her. and she is now suing the government.
Asked what it’s like to be indicted, Comey described not the fear of the system but the mental shift of being placed inside it.
“Probably less… what’s the right word? Probably less upsetting for me,” he said, because he knows courts and processing and how it works. Still, his reaction was disorienting—less terror than an unsettling sense of being at the wrong table with the wrong team.
He said he had no doubt it would be dismissed before a trial. grounded in the belief that he was innocent. He wanted it dismissed as a vindictive prosecution meant for other people’s benefit. and he said the case was dismissed on other grounds rather than reaching that point. “I had complete faith how it was going to end up,” he said.
Now, with the new indictment, he described it by naming the action he believes it centers: “Jim sees seashells down by the seashore.” When asked to say it quickly, he told the interviewer, “say that five times fast.”
Comey declined to describe the indictment’s details. He said he promised his friends who are his lawyers that he wouldn’t discuss the case and he wants to follow court rules by not talking about evidence or legal arguments outside of the courtroom. But he said he assumes the fight will keep coming: “If not this. there will be something else. ” he said. linking that to what he believes Donald Trump has made clear to personal lawyers now leading the Justice Department.
The financial cost is real, he said. He reported that people are volunteering to be part of the defense effort, but he still has to pay legal fees. “It costs me money,” he said. He also argued that for Trump, using the process itself as punishment matters.
Asked whether he regrets taking photos of the seashells, Comey responded, “I’m not going to answer that.”
He then turned to something he found especially troubling: comments by the acting attorney general. Todd Blanche. after the seashell indictment. Blanche publicly said, “Well, there’s more. There’s more evidence.” Comey argued that as a prosecutor. you’re not supposed to insinuate there’s more evidence after the government has had the opportunity to lay out the evidence. and he said there’s no national security reason. as far as he can presume. for not presenting it. “Did that strike you as particularly untoward?” the interviewer asked.
Comey answered that the most important thing is court-process restraint: “all participants respect the court process and abide the local rules not to talk about evidence or legal arguments outside of the courtroom,” and he said he expects the government to do the same.
That dispute over process fed into a bigger concern. When asked what he thinks the goal is, Comey framed the prosecution as not meant to get him jailed—because he said no one would file a case like this believing it would succeed. Instead, he said he sees an intent to get even and to send a message.
He listed names he said Trump’s approach includes—John Brennan. Jim Clapper. Adam Schiff. Letitia James—people he described as having come after Trump. criticized him. or investigated him. “I need to get even with people. ” Comey said. in his view of Trump’s world. “and I also need to send a message to others that if you try to come after me. there will be a significant cause.”.
Comey’s courtroom sermon wasn’t delivered through legal briefs. It came through a historical speech about the justice system’s guardrails.
He turned to Robert Jackson, describing one of the most important speeches in Department of Justice history. Comey said that in 1940. as the country neared war. Jackson gathered federal prosecutors at the Justice Department’s Great Hall and gave a warning: prosecutors can be both useful and dangerous; the danger is when prosecutors pick a person instead of investigating a crime. and when decisions are made for partisan reasons. Comey said that Jackson’s speech became a “life force” within the Department of Justice for Republicans and Democrats. He said he would hope that if a president pushed him to pursue a person rather than a crime. he would remember the speech and either refuse and be fired. refuse and resign. or refuse and convince the president not to do it.
Comey compared it to a moment from The Fugitive—Harrison Ford’s plea, “I’m innocent!” met by Tommy Lee Jones’s response, “I don’t care!”—and said it seems that’s how things feel now.
“Yeah. I don’t know who the “they” is,” he said. “But. yeah. it doesn’t seem to me like the leadership of the Department of Justice is living Robert Jackson’s words.” He warned that becoming numb to repeated indictments is dangerous. and he said even he has to resist that habit: “There’s a danger in that. right?. ‘Oh, here comes another indictment.’ So we all have to resist becoming numb to it.”.
He added that he believes the next administration will have to fix it, pointing to a precedent: “That’s something the attorney general did after Watergate.” He also said he doesn’t think it will be as hard as people imagine because people will pour back in—if they want to fix it.
He acknowledged the obvious counterargument: that critics could ask why this is politically motivated now when the Russia probe was political to some. Comey said mistakes happened in the past. that people did things they shouldn’t have done. but he argued the reasons were explored and that the process never looked like the FBI acting as a political force to achieve a political goal. He said the effort to do things “in the right way” managed to offend people at both ends of the political spectrum.
When the conversation shifted from the courtroom to the person, he described how public attention hits him in small ways. He said he gets recognized because “I’m a giraffe,” and he reported that haters don’t come up to him.
The cases haven’t been abstract for his family either. He said his daughter Maurene was fired, and that his son-in-law resigned as a federal prosecutor after the first indictment. He called it painful and said parents can’t take it personally when the question turns to their children. “As a parent, you say to yourself, ‘Say whatever you want about me, but my children?. Are you kidding me?’”.
He was also asked whether he could sue the president for harassment. Comey said, “I don’t know. It’s a good question. ” and he pointed to news that commissions may be set up to reward money to people targeted by the Biden administration. suggesting maybe another commission could be created for others targeted by Trump.
Inside the FBI, he said the picture he’s heard from conversations with people is an institution feeling under siege—shorthanded, under tremendous pressure, and counting the days until the end of the administration.
He also said he has never met Kash Patel.
Discussing Patel’s relationship to the bureau led him to talk about the pressures inherent in the director’s role: constant scrutiny. identity that matters outside the United States. and the sense of obligation to protect the institution. “Outside the United States. the identity of the bureau is extraordinary. ” he said. adding that if stories are true. it makes the pressure and stakes feel worse.
That thread connected to what he said Americans are being reminded of—an era in which organizations like the FBI can be turned into forces that violate rights if used the wrong way. He described a time he spoke with Bob Mueller after Comey served as director for a couple months. saying he was struck by how much autonomy he had and how almost no one knew what he did. Mueller told him, Comey said, that’s exactly why the role needs good oversight and good people.
Then Comey pivoted to writing, because that is where his future aims to land. Red Verdict is his fourth Nora Carleton novel. He said he never thought he would write fiction. After his first book A Higher Loyalty came out in ’18 and Saving Justice came out in January 2021. he said agents and editors began urging him to consider fiction. He rejected the idea, calling it “beneath me” and refusing to write crime fiction. He described those initial reactions as wrong.
He defended writing a female character and said he had a household with more girls than boys, plus his wife, who served as his first reader, telling him what he was missing. He said his other readers were five children who read everything he did before he went out to friends.
He also addressed accusations that his novels are “woke,” citing a gay woman protagonist and minority characters, and said he learned about sexual identity journeys from his own children.
Some of the conversation returned to moral certainty—an accusation that he thinks his sense of right and wrong is keener and more essential than others’. He said he shrugs at that. “Doubt is wisdom,” he said, arguing that he works hard to doubt and teaches others that doubt is not weakness.
The interview moved through his memoir work as well, including his recollection of the Clinton investigation. He reaffirmed that, with the knowledge he had at the time, the decisions were still the right decisions. He singled out one moment he sometimes wonders about: whether on Oct. 28 he should have dumped the issue on the attorney general.
Comey described new information tied to Anthony Weiner’s computer—he said there were 300. 000 emails on the laptop and that the team saw BlackBerry.net emails from the beginning of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. which he said they had never found before. He said the investigators feared evidence about intent at the core of the case would likely be at the beginning—where someone would have warned Clinton you couldn’t use email for that kind of thing. His team told him to reopen the investigation. and he described the sequence of testifying over the summer that the investigation was done and then being forced to confront that it wasn’t.
He said they couldn’t conceal it, pointing to norms within the FBI about candor, especially when testifying. He described how he tried to hand it to Loretta Lynch: he said he asked his chief of staff to call her chief of staff and offer a conversation. but the response came back that she disagreed and did not wish to speak with him. He said at the time he understood it as, “You’ll take this hit.”.
He also recalled the personal toll of being blamed for Donald Trump’s election. He recounted a moment from six months earlier when, in a CVS, a woman older than him looked at him as she walked out, said, “Oh, you’re the reason we have Donald Trump,” and then walked past.
Comey said that if he had a time machine and knew everything now. he would return to a question he attributed to Trisha Anderson. the deputy general counsel for National Security. Anderson asked whether what Comey was about to do might help elect Trump. Comey said his answer had to be no because down that path lies the “death of the FBI as an independent institution. ” and he said the FBI director can’t pick who is president.
The interview also included Comey’s childhood trauma, describing a neighborhood rapist who held him and his brother captive. He said his father awakened him the day after the event to tell him his brother was outside speaking to the media and he would miss interviews. He said the family dealt with it by refusing to acknowledge it. Comey described how. starting Monday in school. every class period was devoted to him telling the story—seven periods. then continuing through high school and college. and even at parties. He said he has come to see that constant recalling as cognitive behavioral therapy that landed him in a healthier place. and he said his brother seems healthy but they have never talked about how they processed it.
Looking ahead, he said he wants the next 10 to 15 years to center on being a grandfather. He said he has five grandchildren. watches them at least two days a week with his wife. and returns them after dinner to help his kids. He said he will write more fiction and has a nonfiction project in mind. He also said he has zero possibility of doing politics.
As the conversation ended, Comey returned to his core optimism. He said he has been tested by the American people returning Donald Trump to the Oval Office. but he still believes America will recover. pointing to American history and the country’s ability to weather worse—when he was a kid. he said. presidents were murdered. Dr. King and Malcolm X were murdered, a president’s brother was murdered, and cities burned. “No. it’s not. and so we’ve been through that journey a lot of times. ” he said. adding he sees in young people a passion that keeps him afloat.
He acknowledged that it increasingly feels like forces are being unleashed that are hard to reverse—about the place in the world. leadership. moral example. ethical aspirations. He also tried to imagine the future Donald Trump created through “blundering in the Persian Gulf. ” the knock-on effects. and whether they can be undone.
But his position didn’t change: “America will recover,” he said.
And in the moment—at a roadside pub near the home where he found out about another seashell charge—his message landed with the same insistence he brought to court process: the system can’t be allowed to drift into something numb and punitive. Comey is trying to keep his life moving forward. The legal calendar, though, keeps bringing him back to the wrong table.
James Comey FBI Todd Blanche seashell indictment Russia probe Hillary Clinton emails Maurene Comey Donald Trump Robert Jackson Justice Department Red Verdict