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.....

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.