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“Back-and-Forth:” How Ellis Boyle Hid that Jim Comey Self-Snitched
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In DOJ’s response to Jim Comey’s motion to suppress two warrants targeting him, Ellis Boyle responded to one of Comey’s complaints — that FBI Agent April Floyd had insinuated Patrice Comey had omitted information when interviewed by the Secret Service on May 17, 2025 (two days after Comey posed seashells Trump wants to criminalize) — by explaining that Floyd was simply presenting evidence “not entirely consistent” with Patrice’s statements. “Just asking questions,” as far right trolls explain their actions.To explain why she got Comey to take his seashells post down, Patrice had told the Secret Service she had responded to the accusation from her relative, Person-1, that Comey’s post was a call to violence by Googling to see what he meant, and once she saw what nutjobs on Newsmax were saying, she told Comey and he took down his post. Floyd had insinuated that that testimony was inconsistent with Patrice having done an earlier Google search showing that she sent Comey the standard definition — the restaurant one — two minutes before he published his post.
Agent Floyd was attempting to criminalize the fact that Patrice had just seen and shared a totally innocent definition of 86 before Comey posted — to treat exculpatory information as inculpatory because Patrice left out one of the Google searches she did on an 11-minute call with the Secret Service.
In his response to Comey’s motion to suppress, Boyle responded this way, claiming that that inconsistency supported probable cause:
Again, the agent simply recited facts regarding Mrs. Comey’s known statements to law enforcement and certain evidence that was not entirely consistent with her statements. “According to the Meta returns, Defendant posted the “86 47” post to Instagram at 3:14 pm, which was two (2) minutes after Patrice sent him a screenshot of definition of the term “86.” The screenshot appeared to be of an Internet search of the term “86.” During her interview with USSS, Patrice admitted that she performed a Google search of the term, but stated she did so after [Person 1] made her aware that the term “86” could be interpreted in a violent matter.” [DE 40-2 p. 27]. The agent’s recitation of the facts laid bare why probable cause existed to search of Mrs. Comey’s Google search history to reveal evidence related to this investigation.
That’s interesting because — as I tried to sort through a few other things about Patrice’s relative — I realized DOJ had done precisely the same thing: left out at least one of the Google searches Patrice did, and in so doing, obscured April Floyd’s unreliability.
Boyle included a picture of one of Patrice’s Google searches as an exhibit to explain Patrice’s conversation with her relative. It was a picture showing someone’s phone, showing Person-1 going off on a rant, followed by Patrice’s response: a screen cap of an Amazon site selling an 8647 “Anti Trump Funny T-Shirt.”
8647 is a call for violence, Person-1 accused. That’s not what Amazon says, Patrice responded.
The time on the phone when the picture was taken shows 5:57; the time of the text shows 4:52PM (no time zone is shown, but both of these are Central Time).
But that’s not the picture Floyd used in the warrant affidavit. She used one showing the time on the phone as 3:21 (and a more fully charged battery). Of note, the screen cap in the warrant affidavit does not show what time Person -1 sent his text (though Floyd did provide the time in introducing the screencap, which is the most direct way to understand that Person-1 is in Central Time Zone). The screen cap included above omits one line of Patrice’s response — “Someone else put those shells” — but both cut the rest of text. Both just show how the text exchange began.
The reason there are separate copies, as Pat Fitzgerald explained in his affidavit accompanying these motions, is because when FBI Agent April Floyd interviewed Person-1 at his home in the Central Time Zone on April 13, she asked him to go through his phone to see whether he had given her all the relevant texts.
20. Earlier that day, prior to the recorded interview, Person-1 transmitted to the case agent screen shots of their text exchanges with Patrice Comey. During the interview, the case agent asked Person-1 to scroll through their telephone to make sure that they had sent the case agent all the text exchanges with Patrice Comey. Person-1 did so then and there and while doing so observed: “I thought that was weird sending me an Amazon picture of an 8647 shirt.” Ex. O. [M10 audio] Elsewhere during the interview, Person-1 noted that Patrice Comey had sent them a “screenshot of what people on the right were saying.” Id. The FBI thus received multiple copies of the text messages reflecting Google searches that Patrice Comey sent in response to Person-1’s 5:52 pm EST text asserting that Mr. Comey’s seashell post was a call to violence in addition to the copies the Secret Service previously obtained in 2025. Those included a 5:57 pm EST text that attached a partial screen shot of an Internet search reflecting “8647 Anti-Trump Funny T Shirt.” Exs. P; Q; R. [006077, 007480 and 012441] The FBI also captured multiple copies of a 6:05 pm EST text that included the language: “Now that you said what you said and I googled and saw the right wing narrative about the numbers” and included part of a screenshot of an Internet search reflecting a “Newsmax” posting. Exs. P; S; T; U; V; W. [006080, 006082, 007481, 007482, 012147, 012442, 012443] I attach a redacted copy of that text. Ex. P. [006080]12
12 The exhibit is redacted to protect Person-1’s identity.
It’s not clear whether Person-1 did send Agent Floyd all the exchange or not: most of the exchanges between Person-1 and Patrice are redacted, making it impossible to understand what happened with these documents.
But of one thing we can be clear: in both the warrant and in Boyle’s response, DOJ left out the most important search return Patrice got, showing a Newsmax article from earlier in April 2025 based on Mike Lee incitement (again, here, as in the earlier screen caps, the time is Central Time, so these texts were sent — as Fitzgerald described — at 6:05PM ET).
As a reminder, we’re seeing these materials as part of an effort to suppress an Apple warrant obtained in March and a Google warrant obtained in May. One of the biggest thrusts of Comey’s challenge is that Agent Floyd didn’t tell a Magistrate Judge what a biased, unreliable source Person-1 is.
Second, both affidavits distorted Person-1’s statements to government investigators. The affidavits averred that Person-1 “immediately perceived Comey’s post to contain a violent meaning.” Apple Warrant Aff. at 18; Google Warrant Aff. at 24. But Person-1’s own statements, which the case agent omitted from the affidavits, contradict this account. In a transcribed interview from May 21, 2025, Person-1 stated that their “first initial” thought was to interpret “86” as being “out of something on the menu,” but that they eventually concluded that Mr. Comey’s message must have been a “call to violence.” Fitzgerald Aff. ¶¶ 12-13. And in that same interview, Person-1 noted that they had listened to an episode of Mr. Giuliani’s show, where Mr. Giuliani claimed that the term “86” appeared in transcripts and tapes from organized crime cases prosecuted by Mr. Comey—a claim that the FBI had determined to be false, but that Person-1 believed to support their conclusion. Indeed, the case agent reminded Person-1 in the April 2026 interview that Mr. Giuliani’s May 2025 statements “referenced specific mob cases that Comey worked on when he was a prosecutor in New York, and that there were several logs of videotapes and phone calls where the mobsters were saying ‘we’ve got to 86 this guy.’” Id. ¶ 17. But the case agent did not tell Person-1 that Mr. Giuliani’s statement was proven untrue by the FBI’s own investigation. Instead, the case agent reinforced Person-1’s opinion that Mr. Comey most likely “knew” the sinister meaning of “86.”6
Worse still, the affidavit in support of the Apple warrant included another omission related to Person-1: that affidavit studiously avoided mentioning Person-1’s utter lack of credibility. The case agent portrayed Person-1 as someone socially connected to the Comeys— and who therefore might have insight into Mr. Comey’s thinking—and who believed Mr. Comey “must have known that ‘86 47’ was a call for violence” due to Mr. Comey’s “extensive experience as a lawyer and with the FBI.” Apple Warrant Aff. at 18. What the affidavit failed to acknowledge was Person-1’s express bias against Mr. Comey—including their pointed desire that “Jim goes to jail,” see Fitzgerald Aff. ¶ 12—and years-long estrangement from Mr. Comey. Person-1 therefore lacked any personal insight into Mr. Comey’s thinking. Nor did the affidavit disclose Person-1’s issues leading to their need to enter rehabilitation.
6 In a similar vein, when Person-1 speculated that the Comeys had only decided to claim for the sake of media appearances that Ms. Comey’s restaurant expertise informed her interpretation of “8647,” the case agent reinforced that belief despite having documentary proof it was not true. Fitzgerald Aff. ¶ 19.
Comey implies that Floyd suppressed all the dodgy stuff about Person-1 by failing to mention what Person-1 said in a May 21, 2025 Secret Service interview or in the April 13 interview where Floyd asked him to check his phone for all the texts. Both these interview recordings were submitted to Judge Louise Flanagan as exhibits, but they’re only available by citation to us.
That is, Comey suggests that Floyd simply suppressed Person-1’s two more substantive interviews, where he said things that were entirely inconsistent with the story Floyd wanted to tell, which was that one of Patrice’s family members immediately responded to Comey’s post by deeming it violent.
But even before you get to these longer, recorded interviews, Floyd is leaving out at least one really important detail.
Here are the notes from the May 17 Secret Service phone interview with Person-1, which are part of a summary Secret Service Agent Eric Adams sent AUSA Gabriel Diaz on May 21, 2025 to get him up to speed on the investigation he just opened. (Diaz, remember, would months later be one of the loaner AUSAs sent to EDVA to try to prosecute Comey for lying; he got out of dodge around the New Year.) If Adams’ summary is accurate, then Secret Service Agent Jamie Marcella spoke to Patrice for 11 minutes at mid-day on May 17, two days after Comey posted the seashell picture, and then, less than an hour later, called Person-1 and spoke to him for seven minutes.
The pink box marks an incomplete redaction that is is consistent with the name of Person-1 being “Failor,” Patrice’s maiden name, which she sometimes still uses. There’s another incomplete redaction in the Google warrant that is consistent with the name beginning with an “F,” though both these redaction fails fall short of proving that Person-1’s name is Failor.
Compare that paragraph with the paragraph that appears in both of Floyd’s warrant affidavits that purportedly copies right from it.
Not only did Floyd apparently get the date of the Person-1 call wrong (marked with a pink rectangle), which has the effect of suggesting Secret Service spoke to Person-1 the same day Comey posted the seashells. But she left out the following details from the Secret Service summary:
- Person-1 does not have Instagram, so he didn’t see Comey’s post until one of his friends sent it to him via text.
- Person-1 read the full text exchange out loud to the Secret Service, which time he read out as happening in Central Time; the conversation lasted 36 minutes, until 5:28PM CT, or 6:28PM ET (meaning we’re missing 23 minutes of the conversation in the publicly available exhibits).
- Person-1 and Patrice have differing political views, which omission would support Comey’s bias claim.
- The text conversation involved a “back-and-forth,” with each person trying to defend their view of the seashells post.
Consider how those omissions work in tandem with Floyd’s sharing of only Patrice’s first Google result — the funny Amazon merch — and exclusion the NewsMax article. Add in the complete silence about the length of time the conversation lasted and — most importantly!! — that it extended until three minutes after Comey posted his explanation for deleting his post, and it makes Patrice’s explanation — that the text exchange convinced her that others viewed the post differently than she and Comey did — credible, while completely debunking the claim that Floyd and Boyle offer: that the call with Person-1 was just a cover story for deleting the post. Here’s how Boyle described it:
The relative texted Comey’s wife: “You guys have really gone off the deep end over the years with your TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome]. 8647 is a call for violence no matter how you spin it. You should be ashamed of yourselves. . . . I hope Jim goes to jail for his crimes.” Comey’s wife responded denying that the post had been a call to violence. [Exhibit 8].
Comey deleted the post later that day. He has claimed he did so in response to the text from his relative. Comey also put up a new post stating:
I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.
Comey didn’t delete that post “later that day,” Ellis! He deleted it during that text exchange. And Floyd hid that detail in her excisions from the Secret Service summary she was working off of. In her Google warrant affidavit, Floyd also left out the timestamp on Comey’s post explaining why he deleted his seashells post, though in a different part of the affidavit she describes that it was 6:25PM.
It’s April Floyd (and Ellis Boyle) who are trying to cover up a relevant Google search, the search resulting in the NewsMax piece, not Patrice. While it’s not a logical progression from the Amazon merch to take down the post, it is a logical progression to take down a post after reading the NewsMax story. April Floyd hid that and the temporal connection, and so did Ellis Boyle in his response.
But there’s something else they’re misrepresenting.
Floyd’s affidavits use the passive voice to describe who first reported Comey’s post to Secret Service (and continue to use the passive voice to describe who believes 8647 is violent, which is a problem because it is only criminal if Comey believes it).
On May 15, 2025, the United States Secret Service (USSS) was notified of an Instagram post authored by Comey, while he was staying in Emerald Isle, North Carolina, utilizing the Instagram handle “comey.” … The post was reported to the USSS as a possible call for violence against President Donald J. Trump given the association of the numbers.
Boyle describes Emerald Isle people calling the cops and claims Comey refused to be interviewed by the Secret Service.
When Comey’s post appeared, there was immediate public outcry. Within a few hours, in Emerald Isle, at least two residents, one employed by the Police Department, notified the Emerald Isle Chief of Police.
[snip]
While he initially refused to provide his address at the beach house to be interviewed on the night of May 15, Comey later told the Secret Service (which, along with the FBI, investigated the potential threat) that Comey had interpreted “86” as a term meaning to “ditch, dump, or replace” and “47” as representing President Trump.
Compare that tale to how the Secret Service report describes the investigation beginning; to the extent that it includes any time stamp — Adam Daniels alerting Trump’s protective detail of the post — it happened while Patrice and Person-1 were texting back and forth, and just 18 minutes before Comey posted his explanation:
Secret Service found the post itself and then … Jim Comey snitched on himself?!?!? Boyle doesn’t reveal this at all and (unless Boyle is counting Comey among the two Emerald Isle people who called the cops) Boyle also left out that Comey first snitched on himself with the local cops, too.
Here’s how Fitzgerald describes what he understands of the known timeline.
Mr. Comey left a voicemail for the local police chief at 8:00 pm to notify him about the controversy over his post. [000775]
Mr. Comey was telephonically interviewed by the United States Secret Service (“Secret Service”) on the evening of May 15, 2025. Ex. A. [012061] The Secret Service agent who interviewed him sent an internal email at 9:46 pm reporting he “just spoke to James Comey on the phone a few minutes ago.”
Floyd does get around to describing that Comey called Secret Service himself (she gets the apparent sequence right, but doesn’t provide time stamps), but doesn’t say whether anyone called Secret Service before him; that’s the work her passive voice is doing. There’s absolutely nothing in the public record that explains, “The post was reported to the USSS as a possible call for violence,” by whom.
It’s certainly possible Person-1 did call Secret Service at some point — as I note below, on May 21, 2025, he told the Secret Service that, “I eventually reached out.” But that is not reflected in the public records.
And both Boyle and Floyd do things — it may be inadvertent on Floyd’s part — to insinuate that Person-1 was the guy who called Secret Service. As noted above, Floyd uses the wrong date for the Secret Service interview of Person-1, suggesting it happened the same day as the post. And in context, Boyle puts Person-1’s text where a report to Secret Service should otherwise be.
When Comey’s post appeared, there was immediate public outcry. Within a few hours, in Emerald Isle, at least two residents, one employed by the Police Department, notified the Emerald Isle Chief of Police. At least one relative of Comey also understood the post’s apparent meaning. The relative texted Comey’s wife: “You guys have really gone off the deep end over the years with your TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome]. [my emphasis]
No one is telling who called Secret Service. And on the public record, it may have been Jim Comey himself.
But that’s not really what dragged me down this rabbit hole.
I’m interested in not just whether anyone snitched out Comey to Secret Service before he himself did. I’m also interested in who called Person-1, someone who hadn’t spoken to Patrice for years and who as someone without Instagram was unaware of the controversy until his friend alerted him to it. I’m interested in whether Person-1 was specifically nudged to turn this into a big deal.
All the more so given the possibility that Patrice’s brother, Ed Failor Jr, who has rat-fucking ties to Ed Martin going back to 2008, ties that were investigated for years, is Person-1. This whole thing started, after all, just days after Eagle Ed was removed as DC US Attorney because he was not confirmable, and Eagle Ed tried to stay relevant by drumming up stupid criminal charges against Trump’s enemies. And being from Iowa, as both Ed and Patrice are (these ties were all aired in 2018, in response to a different Comey Instagram post), might mean fellow Iowan Mike Davis — literally the single biggest champion of caging Jim Comey after Trump, and also one of the most important cogs in weaponizing DOJ — could have sent that text.
Comey makes much of the way Person-1 was influenced by Rudy Giuliani’s rantings, and that makes sense since Comey used to work with Rudy. Secret Service laundered Rudy’s false claim that Comey would know 8647 had a mob connotation through Person-1 in the second interview (again, I want to know if someone alerted Person-1 to Rudy’s rant). But a far bigger question is who sent Patrice’s relative the Instagram in the first place, because that person is likely the one that led Person-1 to believe (or say he believed) that the post was a call for violence.
This whole story is build around a virgin birth, that passive voice who “was notified” the Secret Service of a potential threat against Trump. But the virgin birth only works by substituting Person-1’s texts to Patrice for Jim Comey’s self-snitch. And that only works by hiding the “back-and-forth” that went on in that text conversation.
Yesterday, rather than notifying Judge Flanagan of all the turmoil in the Florida Grand Conspiracy case (as I expected Comey might), Comey asked to delay his trial until after the New Year. As of right now, the trial would begin on October 21. A delay would give time for Flanagan to read these filings and — I’m sure Comey hopes — grant either a Franks hearing, so Comey could grill Floyd why she obscured the details of the text conversation between Patrice and Person-1, or a selective prosecution hearing, so Comey could air all the ways Todd Blanche — and people like Ed Martin and Mike Davis — created this bullshit out of nothing.
Who is Person-1?
- Person-1 is male.
- Person-1 lives in the Central Time Zone.
- Person-1 does not have Instagram; he got Comey’s post when a friend sent it to him.
- Person-1 stated that they had not spoken to Mr. Comey in two or three years. Ex. H. [12475]
- Person-1 mentioned that they had left a prior career after they went to “rehab.”
- Person-1 also stated that they had just blocked Patrice Comey’s telephone number after their May 15 conversation.
- Person-1 expressed regret to the agents that they did not have “something more” to make the Comeys “face consequences for this.” Ex. H. [012476] They added “I guess there’s nothing that I can share that isn’t just speculation on my part, right?”7 Id.
- [Person-1] further advised the agents that they told Patrice Comey that “I hope Jim goes to jail” for alleged “crimes he committed” as FBI Director. Id.
- Person-1 also expressed disagreement with the role of Mr. Comey’s son-in-law [Troy Edwards, who was on the Oath Keeper prosecution team] prosecuting crimes committed on January 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol. Ex. H. [012475]
May 21, 2025 interview
In the recorded May 21 interview, a more detailed explanation was provided: they stated that their first reaction to the seashells post was a benign one associated with prior work in restaurants:8 …my first initial thought was personally, I thought that the only way that I really heard 86 in my life before is when I used to work in restaurants in college and its like… out of something on the menu, you know, 86 or not the menu whatever. Ex. H. Person-1 then made clear that their perception changed as they thought more about the seashells and took into account other information outside of that post, including the inability of the Democrats to impeach President Trump, given Republican control of Congress. In particular, Person-1 said they had listened after the fact to a media appearance by Rudolph Giuliani prior to the May 21 interview during which Mr. Giuliani said that Mr. Comey had worked on “specific mob cases” where “they had several logs of videotapes and stuff and phone calls saying, you know, we gotta 86 this guy.” [012474] Person-1 then stated: “That’s why I eventually reached out. because I thought there was no shot in hell that this man who spent his life doing all the things that he’s done up to this point, prosecuting mob families in New York … there was no way he didn’t know how that was at least going to be interpreted by most people.” [012475] Person-1 came to the conclusion that the seashells post constituted a “call to violence,” although they did not suggest the post was a threat by Mr. Comey to carry out violence himself. [012473]
8 They indicated that the restaurant interpretation was “My first initial thing, the only way I ever heard it….” and it meant “out of something on the menu.” Ex. H. [12474]
[snip]
[D]uring interviews with law enforcement, Person-1 levied a series of personal insults against Mr. Comey and his wife that were also unrelated to the post. See Ex. H (sealed). [my emphasis]
April 13, 2026 interview
I’m tired of hearing about Jim… But in reality that probably originally was my first thought. But when I saw it, I quickly went through in my head like the term “86” to me that I am familiar with in my own life is in a restaurant right like when “something’s off the menu”… it’s “86’d” … you don’t serve it any more but pretty quickly my mind went to… I know he wasn’t trying to take Trump off the menu but if he was, like what would that mean, right, how would you get rid of “47” right now with both houses of Congress or Congress and the Senate being under Republican control? It couldn’t have been impeachment, it couldn’t have been all these things…
So like I just thought that there was a clear implication, whether a joke or whether you know trying to be sly that my perception was very quickly that well certainly Jim, coming up from you know his time in the Southern District of New York, being the district attorney there and prosecuting mob boss cases…that we have to know what that means and so it had to be something along those lines…were my initial thoughts as I can best recollect them now.
[snip]
Agent: You said that after the fact so after you had time to reflect on what you thought the post had meant that you heard Rudy Giuliani give an interview about Comey’s post. And that Giuliani referenced specific mob cases that Comey worked on when he was a prosecutor in New York, and that there were several logs of videotapes and phone calls where the mobsters were saying ‘we’ve got to 86 this guy.’ Do you remember?
Person-1: I don’t recall that specifically but also could be where what I just said about where 86 came from…. I believe that is true if I said it but I don’t remember that specifically.
[snip]
During the interview, the case agent reminded Person-1 that they had expressed a concern to the Secret Service that Mr. Comey’s public explanation that Patrice Comey interpreted “8647” in light of her restaurant experience was made up after the fact for purposes of media appearances. The case agent stated in response: “And then of course, they go on these shows and then all of sudden the ‘86’ restaurant [story]10 comes out.”
Timeline
May 15
1:56PM: Comey takes picture of 8647
3:12PM: Patrice Googles and gets restaurant usage, sends to Comey
3:14PM: Comey posts picture
5:52PM: Person-1 first texts Patrice
5:57PM: Patrice sends 8647 anti-Trump shirt Google return
6:05PM: Patrice sends NewsMax post and says, “Now that you said what you said and I googled and saw the right wing narrative about the numbers”
6:07PM: Adam Daniels notifies PIOC of incident
6:21PM First draft of explanation drafted
6:25PM: Comey explanation publicly posted
6:28PM: Text exchange between Patrice and Person 1 ends
8:00PM: Comey calls local cops
9:46PM: Secret Service interview completed
May 16
8:12AM: Trump raises Comey in Bret Baier interview
10:33AM: USSS adds 8647 to threat list
5:50PM: USSS interview of Comey at WFO starts
6:34PM: USSS interview of Comey at WFO ends
11:12PM: USSS removes 8647 from threat list
May 17
11:11: ATSAIC phones Patrice
11:22: ATSAIC ends call with Patrice
12:18: ATSAIC calls Person-1
12:25: ATSAIC ends call with Person-1
May 20
UNK: Rudy claims 86 use as a threat came up in mafia cases
May 21
4:43PM: USSS Eric Adams plans trip to Emerald Isle
6:22PM: Gabriel Diaz documents opening the investigation
6:26PM: Adams sends investigative materials
10:30PM: Adams responds regarding preservation order
UNK: Secret Service conducts more substantive interview with Person-1
Links
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