A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina has indicted former FBI Director James Comey on two counts related to a since-deleted Instagram post showing seashells arranged to spell "86 47", numbers federal prosecutors say amounted to a threat against President Trump, the 47th president. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the charges Tuesday, calling the case a straightforward application of laws that protect the commander-in-chief from threats of violence.
The indictment charges the 65-year-old Comey with "knowingly and willfully making a threat to take the life of and to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States" and with "knowingly and willfully transmitting an interstate commerce communication that contained a threat to kill the president of the United States." Comey denies any violent intent and has vowed to fight the charges.
This is the second time in less than a year that the Justice Department has brought criminal charges against the former FBI chief, and it lands in a political environment already charged with tension after Trump survived what the New York Post reported as a third assassination attempt Saturday at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, following two earlier attempts during the 2024 campaign in Butler, Pa., and at a Florida golf course.
On May 15, 2025, Comey posted an image on Instagram showing seashells arranged on a beach to form the numbers "86 47." In restaurant slang, "86" means to get rid of something. "47" is Trump's number as the nation's 47th president. The combination, prosecutors argue, carried a clear message.
Comey deleted the post. He later told MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace the message was "totally innocent" and called it "crazy" that anyone saw it as a call for violence. In a separate statement after the post's deletion, Comey wrote that he "didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence" and "I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down."
The Justice Department sees it differently. The government's position, as the Washington Examiner reported, is that a reasonable recipient familiar with the circumstances would interpret "86 47" as a serious expression of intent to harm the president.
At a news conference Tuesday, Blanche framed the prosecution as routine law enforcement, not political retribution. He pointed to comparable cases involving threats against other officials.
"There are multiple threats cases very similar to this one, including one where the defendant pled guilty recently to threatening former President Biden."
Blanche added that while the defendant's name made the case unusual, the alleged conduct was not. He told reporters that "threatening the life of the president of the United States will never be tolerated by the Department of Justice" and said the department would "always investigate and regularly prosecute" such conduct.
Blanche also pushed back on suggestions that Trump directed the prosecution. He told CBS Mornings that Trump was "absolutely, positively, not" involved and that the investigation had been ongoing for nearly a year before the grand jury returned the indictment. FBI Director Kash Patel echoed that point, telling reporters that career agents and prosecutors handled the case through standard channels.
The broader pattern of the Trump Justice Department holding federal officials accountable for past conduct is not limited to Comey. The DOJ recently paid Carter Page $1.25 million to settle a lawsuit over the FBI's surveillance abuses during the Russia probe, abuses that occurred on Comey's watch.
Comey's attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, issued a statement shortly after the charges were unsealed.
"Mr. Comey vigorously denies the charges contained in the Indictment filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina. We will contest these charges in the courtroom and look forward to vindicating Mr. Comey and the First Amendment."
Comey himself posted a video statement on Substack. His tone was defiant.
"I'm still innocent. I'm still not afraid. And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary, so let's go."
In the same video, Comey cast himself as a principled resister. "My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump," he said, "but we couldn't imagine ourselves living any other way." He also referenced the earlier prosecution: "Well, they're back, this time about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago, and this won't be the end of it."
The First Amendment defense Fitzgerald signaled will likely become the central legal battleground. Prosecutors will need to prove Comey intended the post as a genuine threat, not merely provocative political speech. Fox News reported that Comey's legal team plans to pursue that argument aggressively in court.
This is not Comey's first time facing federal charges under the Trump administration. On September 25 of last year, he was indicted on charges of making false statements and obstruction of justice. That case centered on testimony Comey gave before Congress, specifically, an exchange with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) during a September 30, 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Cruz confronted Comey with his own sworn statements. On May 3, 2017, Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) had asked Comey point-blank whether he had ever been an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump or Clinton investigations. Comey answered "Never." Grassley then asked whether Comey had ever authorized someone else at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source. Comey answered "No."
But Comey had already confessed, publicly, to leaking information to Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, whom he called a "good friend." In 2017 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey admitted he had asked Richman to disseminate memos about Trump's purported instructions to shut down an investigation of national security adviser Michael Flynn. And a 2018 DOJ watchdog investigation into Wall Street Journal leaks found that Comey "agreed it was a 'good' idea" to share information with media on the Clinton email scandal, based on former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's account.
Cruz, in the 2020 hearing, laid the contradiction bare. McCabe, he said, had "publicly and repeatedly stated that he leaked information to the Wall Street Journal and that you were directly aware of it and that you directly authorized it." Cruz then asked Comey: "Who's telling the truth?" Comey replied: "I can only speak to my testimony. I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017."
The first case never reached trial. Two months after the September 25 indictment, a federal judge threw it out, ruling that then-interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan had been improperly appointed and "had no lawful authority" to secure the indictment. The five-year statute of limitations on those charges was set to expire September 30, 2025.
The institutional conflicts surrounding the FBI's conduct during the Trump-Russia era continue to generate legal fallout. Former FBI agents who investigated Trump have filed a lawsuit challenging their terminations, while the administration has moved to hold former officials accountable for what it views as politically motivated investigations.
Comey's defenders frame the indictment as political persecution, the latest in a series of Trump-era moves to punish opponents. His critics see something different: a former law-enforcement chief who spent years leaking to the press, shading the truth under oath, and now posting what prosecutors say was a coded threat against the president he has publicly opposed since 2017.
The facts in the public record make the "innocent seashells" defense a hard sell. Comey is a former federal prosecutor and FBI director. He spent decades parsing the legal significance of words. He posted "86 47" on a public platform while Trump was the sitting 47th president, a man who had already survived multiple assassination attempts. He deleted the post. And his own explanation shifted from claiming ignorance of the meaning to casting himself as a political martyr.
Blanche addressed the political-prosecution charge directly, noting that the case had been under investigation for nearly a year before the grand jury acted. He also pointed out that a defendant recently pleaded guilty to threatening former President Biden, evidence, he said, that the DOJ applies these laws without regard to party.
The Trump Justice Department has also taken action against its own ranks where it found bias. It recently fired four prosecutors over alleged bias in FACE Act cases targeting pro-life activists, a move that, like the Comey prosecution, reflects a willingness to hold federal power accountable to the people it serves.
Comey surrendered in federal court in Virginia on the two charges. The legal battle ahead will test whether a former FBI director's social media post qualifies as protected political speech or as a federal crime. The courtroom fight could take months.
The broader reckoning over the FBI's conduct during the Trump-Russia investigation era shows no signs of fading. A recent Senate clash over a resolution honoring Robert Mueller underscored how deeply those institutional wounds still run, and how far the political class remains from any consensus on what happened and who should answer for it.
James Comey built a career on the idea that no one is above the law. Now he gets to find out if that includes him.