Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury in North Carolina on two felony counts over a social media photo of seashells arranged to read 86 47 — a sequence the Justice Department said constituted a threat against President Donald Trump.
The indictment charges Comey with making a threat to take the life of and inflict bodily harm upon the president, and with transmitting that threat across state lines. Both counts carry a maximum of 10 years in prison, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press conference Tuesday.
Comey posted the image on Instagram on May 15, 2025, during a North Carolina beach walk. The term 86 is used in restaurants to mean canceling or removing something; Trump is the 47th president. Administration officials accused Comey of calling for the president’s assassination. Comey deleted the post the same day and said he was unaware those numbers were associated with violence.
In a video posted to his Substack page, Comey called the charges politically motivated and said he remains innocent and unafraid. His attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said the defense would contest the charges to vindicate both Comey and the First Amendment.
This is the second indictment Comey has faced from the Trump Justice Department. A grand jury charged him in September 2025 with lying to Congress during a 2020 Senate Judiciary hearing — that case was dismissed in November after a judge ruled the prosecutor had been unlawfully appointed, a dismissal without prejudice. A 2023 Supreme Court ruling requires prosecutors to prove the speaker had a subjective awareness the statements could be interpreted as threatening, a high bar Comey’s legal team says the government cannot clear.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stated publicly when the first Comey indictment came down last fall that he was not bothered in the slightest by the prosecution and believed it appropriate for Comey to answer for his conduct as FBI director. Graham has argued for years that Comey withheld exculpatory information from courts during the Russia investigation that defined Trump’s first term.
