On May 8, 2026, the FBI picked up the phone and called Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano — former underboss of the Gambino crime family, convicted murderer, government informant — to ask him a question about his old prosecutor. The question: did James Comey, the man who once put Gambino associates behind bars, understand that the term "86" means to kill someone?
The call lasted 25 minutes. It was recorded. And it's now part of the federal case file.
A new court filing in United States v. John Gambino et al. out of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina reveals the FBI sought Gravano's expert testimony on mob slang as part of its case against Comey, who faces two federal counts — threatening the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. The charges stem from an Instagram post Comey uploaded in May 2025 showing seashells arranged to spell "86 47," a reference to the 47th president, Donald Trump.
Gravano told the FBI exactly what you'd expect a former mob underboss to say. He confirmed that "86" generally means to "get rid of" someone, and that to him, as a "gangster," it means "to kill." He added that Comey "had to know" what the term meant as it related to killing someone.
Comey's defense lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, has pushed back on the interpretation. And Comey himself has offered what might be the least convincing denial in the history of federal prosecutions. "I don't see it the way some people are still saying it is, but again, I don't want any part of any violence," Comey said. He also claimed, "I actually didn't think of it as political speech by me, but I thought, 'What a clever way to express a political view.'"
So a former FBI director — a man who spent years prosecuting organized crime, who built cases around coded language and mob terminology — saw "86 47" and thought it was just a clever little expression. Not a threat. Not mob slang for elimination. Just some fun beach art with seashells.
The FBI's own internal search of the Gambino case materials turned up no references to the term "86." Gravano himself stated he never discussed the term directly with Comey during the prosecution in the 1990s. That's the defense's foothold — that Comey may not have encountered the specific slang during his work on the case.
But here's the problem with that argument. Nobody's claiming Comey learned the term from a case file index. The question is whether a career law enforcement official who spent years immersed in organized crime investigations — who sat across tables from made men and informants, who reviewed wiretaps and surveillance transcripts — somehow never absorbed the meaning of one of the most common pieces of mob vernacular in American English. The term "86" has been in restaurant kitchens, dive bars, and crime dramas for decades. It's not exactly classified intelligence.
The broader picture is what makes this filing land. This is a man who ran the FBI. He oversaw counterintelligence operations. He signed FISA warrants. He sat in the Oval Office and took notes on private conversations with the sitting president, then leaked those notes to a friend to trigger a special counsel appointment. The entire arc of Comey's post-FBI career has been one long exercise in plausible deniability — saying things that carry unmistakable meaning, then insisting he meant something else entirely.
Now the federal government has a recorded interview with a former mob killer who says Comey's explanation doesn't hold up. The DOJ filed charges in April 2026. The case is moving. And the man who once lectured the country about truth and transparency is arguing that he didn't understand a two-digit number that every bartender in America knows means "cut off."
When the feds need a hitman's testimony to decode your Instagram posts, the "faithful public servant" routine starts to lose its shine.
