Newly unsealed court records show the Secret Service tracked James Comey’s phone without a warrant, in an operation Trump reportedly followed from Air Force One.
Miles Taylor, who served as Deputy Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term before revealing himself as the author of the anonymous “resistance” op-ed, walked through what the filings confirmed.
Comey’s seashells, arranged on a North Carolina beach, spelled “86 47.” Trump told Fox News that morning the post “meant assassination” and was “calling for the assassination of the president.”
That set everything else in motion. Within hours, a Secret Service supervisor was asked about pinging Comey’s phone.
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His documented response: “I said it could be done, but it would be a bad idea.” Warrantless emergency tracking legally requires an imminent threat to life, and as Taylor summarized it, “we did not believe that anyone’s life was in immediate danger.”
His superior reportedly called the move “legally questionable” but said they “might do it anyway.”
They did.
Agents tracked Comey’s phone in real time as he and his wife drove home from North Carolina to Virginia, a trip that included, according to his own court filing, a stop to visit the grave of their deceased son. Trump, Comey’s attorneys allege, received updates on the surveillance from aboard Air Force One as it unfolded.
Taylor didn’t see much ambiguity in any of it.
“So, to be clear, we found out that the president of the United States was aboard his airplane, personally tracking the surveillance of a private citizen who had posted a photo of four digits. Obvious free speech. Breathtaking abuse of power to punish it,” he wrote.
The investigation didn’t stop with location tracking.
The government’s effort to build a case around what “86 47” actually meant reportedly included searches of the phrase in FBI databases, ChatGPT and Merriam-Webster, along with an interview with former Gambino crime family figure “Sammy the Bull.”
A separate review of Amazon listings found more than 200,000 products carrying the phrase or close variants, including “86 46” referencing Biden and “86 45” referencing Trump’s own first term, none of which appear to have prompted any comparable federal inquiry.
Even that wasn’t the end of it.
The FBI later obtained warrants for Comey’s Apple and Google accounts, and a North Carolina grand jury indicted him. A Justice Department spokesperson defended the prosecution, telling reporters only that Comey “will have his day in court like any other defendant.”
Taylor believes the case reaches far beyond Comey himself.
“I believe the Comey prosecution will be remembered as one of the most significant First Amendment cases in American history,” he wrote, framing the larger question as “how many other people is this administration illegally watching and preparing to illegally punish.”
He also acknowledged his own position isn’t a neutral one, noting Trump has publicly accused him, John Brennan, James Clapper, Adam Schiff, Barack Obama and Joe Biden of treason.
“I have to assume some of us are already under surveillance for the audacity of criticizing the sitting president,” he wrote.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
