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(NEW YORK) — Less than a month after former FBI Director James Comey’s indictment earlier this year, prosecutors sought the assistance of the notorious gangster Sammy “The Bull” Gravano to build their case against him, his defense lawyers alleged in a court filing on Tuesday. 

A prosecutor and FBI agent allegedly interviewed Gravano to understand if Comey’s experience prosecuting the Gambino crime family in the 1990s would have led him to believe the term “86” was a reference to murder or violence. 

A federal grand jury indicted Comey on two charges in April for posting a picture on his Instagram account of seashells spelling out “8647,” which federal prosecutors say constituted a threat against the president’s life.

Gravano — who confessed to his involvement in 19 murders, including those of his best friend and his brother-in-law, before cooperating with prosecutors — told the prosecutor and FBI agent that he did not interpret Comey’s “8647” seashells post to be a personal threat to President Donald Trump, according to defense lawyers. 

“While Mr. Gravano claimed that all law enforcement agents would be familiar with the term’s alternative organized crime meaning referring to murder, he also claimed that a ‘gangster would never use that term’ because they knew that law enforcement knew what the term meant,” the filing said. “Mr. Gravano did not indicate that he understood the seashells post to be a threat by Mr. Comey to carry out violence personally.” 

The new claims about the case against Comey were included in court filings on Tuesday as part of Comey’s push to throw out evidence seized from Apple and Google through search warrants. Comey’s lawyers say the evidence should be tossed because agents knowingly omitted details in their search warrant applications that would have “eviscerated” their case theory about the meaning of Comey’s “8647” post.  

“The Fourth Amendment safeguards all Americans’ privacy against arbitrary government invasions. It does so by generally requiring the government to obtain a warrant from a magistrate before conducting a search,” Comey’s lawyers wrote. “Here, the government upended that constitutionally-mandated process by misleading the issuing magistrates about fundamental facts of the case.” 

According to defense lawyers, federal agents “spent months poring over records of Mr. Comey’s government service and interviewing people who worked on organized-crime cases more than thirty years ago” to try to find evidence that Comey would have interpreted “86” to have a violent meaning. They searched the records in the case, an FBI database, trial transcripts, the FBI file from the Gambino case, and AI search engines with no success, before turning to Gravano, according to the court filing. 

However, neither Gravano nor two retired FBI agents who spent decades working organized crime cases recalled the term “86” being used to reference murder. That conclusion would undermine a central element of the case against Comey — that he would have believed “86” connoted violence because of his years of work in federal law enforcement, defense lawyers say. 

“As the former Director of the FBI, he knew full well the attention and consequences of making such a post,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement announcing the indictment. 

Defense attorneys seek to paint witness as unreliable

In the filing that detailed alleged conversations with “The Bull,” defense attorneys claim that prosecutors not only omitted details about the lack of evidence linking “86” to violence, but also relied on the testimony of an unreliable witness who told them that they hope Comey “goes to jail” for the “crimes that he committed” as FBI director.

Defense lawyers did not identify the witness or their connection to Comey, but claimed the individual reached out to Comey’s wife shortly after he posted the seashells photo to Instagram. According to defense lawyers, Comey removed the photo after the individual raised concerns the post could be a “call for violence.” Agents later cited that witness’s account in a search warrant affidavit to claim he “immediately perceived the term ’86’ 47′ as a call to get rid of, in a violent way, or even to assassinate President Trump,” according to the filing.  

However, defense lawyers allege that prosecutors failed to include critical information about that witness’s credibility, including his estrangement from Comey, his own assessment of Comey’s mental state as “speculation” and “conjecture,” and experience in rehab after ending their career. 

“Person-1 admitted that they had been estranged from Mr. Comey and had not spoken to him for at least two years; Person-1 also made clear their intense bias against Mr. Comey, stating that they hoped Mr. Comey ‘goes to jail. for the ‘crimes that he committed’ as FBI Director,” defense lawyers wrote. “Although Person-1 indicated that they had left a prior career and entered ‘rehab,’ there were no follow-up questions about what issues led to the need to enter rehabilitation or whether those issues had been resolved.”

According to defense lawyers, the individual originally interpreted “86” through it’s “food service meaning,” but later believed the term “86” was associated with violence after listening to an episode of Rudy Giuliani’s podcast. 

“Mr. Giuliani claimed that Mr. Comey had worked on organized crime cases in which mafia members used the term ’86’ to mean ‘kill,’ as reflected in tapes and transcripts,” the filing said. “Thus, in Person-1’s view, ‘there was no way [Mr. Comey] didn’t know how that was at least going to be interpreted.'”

Defense seeks case’s dismissal in separate filing

Comey’s lawyers in a separate motion filed late on Tuesday sought to use the statements of Trump and his allies to have the case against the former FBI director thrown out.

Comey’s defense lawyers argued that Trump’s repeated calls for Comey’s prosecution and criticism of his public statement “leave no doubt as to his genuine animus” and demonstrate that the case against him for allegedly threatening to kill Trump by posting photos of seashells on a beach is vindictive.

“The ensuing indictment is not based on a good faith application of the law to the facts; instead, it effectuates a yearslong campaign by the President to use the criminal process to punish Mr. Comey for his protected speech and because of the President’s deep-seated animosity,” Comey’s lawyers wrote.

Comey’s lawyers also pointed to allegedly violent statements about government officials made by Trump’s allies to argue that the Department of Justice is not evenly applying the law to prosecute similarly threatening statements.

“Several public figures have recently made statements about government officials that were comparable to, or far more violent than, Mr. Comey’s statement here. None was charged,” his lawyers wrote.

The motion follows a similar effort by Comey’s legal team to have his case tossed before trial on the basis that the Justice Department’s indictment fails to prove Comey’s post wasn’t within his First Amendment rights — while noting that immediately after he was notified the post was creating controversy, he deleted it and clarified it as non-threatening.

Regarding the specific “8647” phrase at the center of the government’s case, Comey’s lawyers noted that Amazon has listed 209,052 items that display the numbers “8645,” “8646,” or “8647,” and none of those items have led to similar prosecutions. Comey’s attorneys say that following his Instagram post of the seashells, the FBI “instituted a new policy, effective immediately, to treat the phrase ‘8647’ as coded language for threatening the President.”

“Mr. Comey’s prosecution appears to be the first indictment solely for publishing ’86’ in connection with a public official,” the motion said.

The filing includes dozens of pages of Trump’s own public statements dating back to 2016 of what Comey’s attorneys allege is an unrelenting campaign of harassment to target one of the former top law enforcement officials in the country.

“Ample objective evidence — much of which comes directly from government officials’ own public statements and admissions — establishes that the President’s animus toward Mr. Comey led to this vindictive and selective prosecution,” the filing said.

Defense lawyers also say former Attorney General Pam Bondi was fired in part because of her failure to prosecute Trump’s political opponents. They argued that the new case against Comey was an “audition” for Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

“Here, the inference is clear: the newly installed political officials in the DOJ strove to accomplish what their predecessors could not, namely, effectuating the President’s desire to punish Mr. Comey,” they wrote.

Trump, in announcing Bondi’s departure, lauded her as “a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year.”

In addition to their motion to dismiss for vindictive and selective prosecution, Comey’s lawyers also requested that prosecutors turn over the transcripts and recordings of grand jury proceedings in the case. They argued that “the government may have misstated key factual and legal issues to the grand jury” and mentioned the issues that came up in the other, now-dismissed case against Comey in Virginia. In that case. prosecutors acknowledged that the entire grand jury did not see the final indictment in the case.

“The record in this case raises a significant risk that irregularities in the grand jury process influenced the grand jury to return an indictment,” the motion said.

The Department of Justice has defended its work prosecuting Comey, arguing they are treating the case no differently than any other threat to a public official. The White House has also denied that Trump is using the Department of Justice to target his political adversaries, though Trump has repeatedly called for Comey to be prosecuted. 

“Our office regularly pursues threat cases including those against public officials. The Grand Jury examined the evidence in this case and found probable cause to indict Mr. Comey. We will continue to pursue the case as we regularly do every day to protect the people of this District and the United States,” U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle said when announcing the indictment in April. 

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(NEW YORK) — A wildfire burning in Utah has grown to more than 31,000 acres, prompting mandatory evacuations of homes and campgrounds and completely closing a highway in the mountainous area.

Fueled by drought conditions and blustery winds, firefighters are waging twin battles against two major blazes, both measuring more than 48 square miles, officials said.

The Cottonwood Fire in Beaver County started Monday afternoon and spread rapidly, fanned by wind gusts of up to 50 mph, according to Utah Fire Info.

Overnight, the Cottonwood fire grew by nearly 7,000 acres “due to high temperatures, gusty winds, and extremely dry fuels,” the U.S. Forest Service said in a statement early Wednesday. The fire remains 0% contained.

The Cottonwood Fire ignited around 3:36 p.m. on Monday, threatening populated areas in Beaver County, according to officials.

Just after 9 p.m. local time on Monday, residents in the Eagle Point and Merchant Valley areas of Beaver County were ordered to evacuate immediately as flames bore down on the area, authorities said.

Evacuation orders remained in effect on Wednesday morning.

Fire officials said on Tuesday that they suspect the Cottonwood Fire is a human-caused blaze, but released no additional details, according to ABC affiliate station KTVX in Salt Lake City.

The Cottonwood Fire is one of 349 wildfires currently burning across Utah consuming more than 105,000 acres combined, according to Utah Fire Info.

The biggest active fire is the Iron Fire burning in Juab County, about 28 miles southwest of Provo. As of Tuesday, the Iron Fire had burned 31,314 acres and was 9% contained, said Al Nash, public information officer for the Great Basin Team 3, a federal agency in charge of the incident.

The fire has prompted numerous evacuations in the area, including the complete evacuation of the town of Eureka, which has a population of just over 600.

Kelly Wicken, a spokesperson for the Utah Division of Forestry, said the blaze started on private land and has now spread across Juab and two other counties, crossing onto federal land and shutting down a highway.

Before the fire, the National Weather Service had issued red flag fire danger warnings for a large part of the state.

Red flag warnings and fire weather watches are in place across southern and central Utah and through much of western and central Colorado, Southern California, Arizona and Nevada. Strong winds and low humidity are expected to fuel the existing fires and enable new fires to spark and spread rapidly. 

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(GLYNCO, Ga.) — A Secret Service agent in training who previously worked as an analyst with the presidential protection team was arrested this week on charges of felony eavesdropping at the nation’s premiere federal law enforcement training academy.

Police reports from Glynn County, Georgia, said the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center student, Joel Lara Canvasser, secretly filmed his suitemate’s every move with a spy camera hidden in a phone charger. Canvasser allegedly targeted the roommate with a weekslong campaign of harassing text messages written to suggest the roommate was being watched by a stalking stranger who could see into his suite and even the bathroom.

Canvasser was arrested Wednesday and charged with unlawful eavesdropping or surveillance, according to police records. He posted bond of $8,458. Canvasser did not respond to messages seeking comment from ABC News.

Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn called the charges against Canvasser “deeply troubling.”

“On April 8, disturbing facts involving a Secret Service trainee assigned to a special agent training class at FLETC in Glynco, Georgia, were brought to light,” Quinn said in a statement to ABC News. “An initial investigation by the Secret Service and FLETC led to the individual’s arrest by local authorities. The charges are deeply troubling and raise significant concerns about the individual’s character and fitness to serve. As this matter is now before the courts, we will allow the facts to be presented through the judicial process. We commend the swift actions of Secret Service trainers and FLETC personnel, whose prompt response ensured the matter was quickly brought forward and addressed through appropriate legal channels.”

The agency also confirmed that the incident occurred between Canvasser and his suitemate, also a Secret Service trainee.

Before applying to be a special agent, Canvasser was a civilian employee assigned to the Office of Strategic Information and Intelligence, which monitors and assesses threats to the president and others under Secret Service protection.

Canvasser started with the Secret Service in the fall of 2025, the agency said — but now in addition to the criminal charges he faces, his access to all Secret Service sites and systems has been revoked while his work status and security clearance is suspended.

According to police, Canvasser in March offered his suitemate a phone charger after the roommate’s charger seemed to have disappeared. Canvasser, police said, told the roommate “the cleaning ladies may have taken it.”

Police said the roommate plugged the charger in below the TV, giving the hidden camera a vantage point that had “coverage of the entire room.”

“Roughly a week after [the roommate] plugs in the charger, he begins receiving odd text messages from various numbers. In the beginning he believed they were spam messages, however over time he began to realize whoever was texting him was simultaneously watching him,” the police report said. “At first, he assumed whoever was texting him had compromised his phone,” so he “placed a Band Aid over the camera.”

The roommate sought Canvasser’s help with what he thought was his hacked device, the report said. Canvasser “has a cyber background and is supposedly good with technology which is why [the roommate] had gone to him for help.”

Canvasser told the suitemate he was probably the victim of malware and offered to help reset the phone, according to the report. But afterward, the roommate noticed the refreshed phone had suddenly and automatically connected to Canvasser’s personal WiFi account — something he found “odd,” according to the report.

The roommate’s reprieve from the harassing messages was short-lived, the report said: the texts “made a return” a week later.

“There was a specific instance where [the roommate] was using the bathroom and his phone was in his pocket. When he finished, he checked his phone and saw a message referencing him using the bathroom. It was at this point that [the roommate] realized the individual was not watching him through his phone camera but instead from another device,” according to the report.

Upon examining the borrowed charger, the roommate noticed it had an unusual glint, and “realized it was a camera,” the report said. “When he had pulled it out of the wall, the light hit the device in such a way that made the lens visible.”

Canvasser’s alleged harassing voyeurism did not stop at the surreptitious filming, according to the report: the roommate told police that “during the past month, Mr. Joel has gone into [his] room on multiple occasions while he’s been sleeping at night. For this reason, [the roommate] has been locking his things up in attempts to prevent these events.”

The trainee’s alleged violations of both privacy and the law are another black mark for the agency tasked with protecting top officials, including the president, vice president, their families and foreign dignitaries visiting the U.S.

The Secret Service had faced intense scrutiny since a gunman attempted to assassinate Donald Trump, then a former president running to return to the White House, while he campaigned at a Pennsylvania rally two years ago. That incident, which prompted the ouster of the agency’s director, was called a “historic security failure by the Secret Service” in an independent review by the Department of Homeland Security.

It also comes after a Secret Service agent tasked with protecting former President Barack Obama knowingly breached his duties while trying to woo a love interest and living a double life, according to a memoir from the agent’s ex-girlfriend. That prompted an internal probe once the agency became aware, after which the agent was ultimately fired.

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