A federal judge has postponed former FBI Director James Comey’s arraignment in the “seashells” case after his attorneys asked to delay proceedings while the court considers several motions seeking dismissal of the indictment.

Comey’s arraignment had been scheduled for Wednesday. His attorneys asked earlier this month to move it to January 2027 and to schedule his trial for February 2027.

The government did not oppose the request. U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan granted the postponement Friday, though she did not set a new trial date and indicated that she would wait until after the arraignment to do so.

Flanagan cited the seriousness of the case, the unresolved motions and the preparation needs of Comey’s legal team. “The gravity of the charges, pending motions, and the need to provide defense counsel additional time to prepare for trial promote need for continuance.”

The ruling marks the second postponement of Comey’s arraignment. The proceeding originally had been scheduled for June, but Comey still has not entered a plea to the charges filed in federal court in North Carolina.

Comey faces two felony counts over a photograph he posted on social media in May 2025. The image showed the numbers “86 47’’ arranged with seashells on a beach in North Carolina.

The phrase is widely used among restaurant workers and generally means to get rid of or refuse something. It can refer to an unwanted customer or an unavailable menu item, according to the account presented in the case.

Prosecutors alleged that the phrase amounted to a threat against Donald Trump, the 47th president. They charged Comey with “knowingly and willfully” threatening the president.

Comey’s lawyers have rejected the government’s interpretation and disputed that the former FBI director was threatening Trump. Their filings argue that the prosecution’s proposed meaning clashes with dictionaries, context, precedent and common sense.

“That claim is contradicted by every possible source of meaning: dictionaries, context, precedent, and common sense,” Comey’s lawyers wrote in a filing. “Most dictionaries don’t even list the meaning — ‘to kill’— that the government now proposes.”

A federal grand jury indicted Comey in April. He made an initial appearance that month in federal court in Virginia, where he resides, but has not been arraigned in the North Carolina court where the charges were filed.

Comey’s attorneys filed several motions in July seeking to dismiss the charges. Those motions include claims that the government engaged in vindictive and selective prosecution by bringing the case.

His lawyers argued that the prosecution “is not based on a good-faith application of the law to the facts” but instead “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.”

Federal prosecutors pushed back against the allegation that the case was vindictive. They argued that Comey had not shown that the officials responsible for the prosecutorial decisions acted with improper motives.

“Comey does not allege (let alone show) that the prosecutorial decisionmakers in this case had improper motives,” prosecutors wrote. “Instead, he speculates that they were induced by others with improper motives.”

Flanagan has not heard arguments or issued a ruling on Comey’s effort to dismiss the indictment. The pending motions now stand between Comey and an arraignment that has already been delayed twice.

The seashell prosecution is the second time Comey has been indicted by Trump’s Department of Justice in the past 12 months. Last September, he was charged with two federal counts of lying to Congress and obstruction of a federal proceeding.

A federal judge ultimately dismissed that Virginia indictment after finding that interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan, who secured and signed it by herself, had been unlawfully appointed. The Trump administration appealed, and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments earlier this month.