Former FBI Director James Comey was criminally indicted again on Tuesday, this time by a federal grand jury in North Carolina over his “86 47” Instagram post last year that MAGA followers interpreted as a threat to President Donald Trump.
The two-count indictment charges Comey with making threats against the U.S. president, felonies that could add up to 15 years in prison. Comey was charged with one count of threats against the president and another count of making threats across state lines.
“I think it’s fair to say that threatening the life of anybody is dangerous,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said Tuesday. “Threatening the life of the president of the United States will never be tolerated by the Department of Justice.”
This is the second time the Trump administration has attempted to fulfill Trump’s pledge to seek revenge on the FBI director he fired during his first administration. A judge threw out the government’s first indictment against Comey last November.
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This time, the Justice Department took a much more aggressive approach: Instead of allowing Comey to appear in court for an arraignment, prosecutors presenting before the grand jury sought an arrest warrant.
Comey’s defense lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, issued a statement saying that his client “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.”
U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan, a President George W. Bush appointee who’s been on the bench since 2003, is assigned to oversee the case.
The charges stem from an episode last May in which Comey posted a photo of seashells arranged on a sandy beach that read “86 47,” using the cryptic numerical reference “86” that typically means “cancel.”
The Trump White House immediately interpreted the message to mean that Comey was calling for the death of the 47th American president.
“Just James Comey causally calling for my dad to be murdered. This is who the Dem-Media worships. Demented!!!!” Donald Trump Jr. said on X shortly thereafter.
Congressional Republicans even introduced a resolution condemning the former FBI director, although the measure never made it past the Judiciary Committee.
Although Comey quickly deleted the post, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claimed Comey should be “put behind bars” for “issuing a hit” on the president. FBI Director Kash Patel announced agents would investigate the matter. According to The New York Times, the Secret Service had undercover law enforcement officers follow Comey and his wife in unmarked cars from the North Carolina coast back to Comey’s home state of Virginia.
In a follow-up post on Instagram, Comey tried to deflect criticism by claiming he’d merely stumbled on the neatly arranged seashells while at the beach.
“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. I never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down,” he wrote.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “eighty-six” as a verb meaning “to discard” or “get rid of.” By contrast, it is the nautical phrase “deep-six” that actually means “to eliminate” by throwing something overboard.
“Mr. Comey will be given every form of due process all citizens are entitled to receive. It doesn’t matter who you are, we take all threat cases seriously and prosecute anyone who violates federal law regardless of title or status,” W. Ellis Boyle, the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of North Carolina, told reporters Tuesday.
FBI Director Kash Patel said this was not a “simple investigation,” noting that agents worked for the greater part of a year to build the case. Patel noted that Comey acknowledged it was a mistake and took down his post, but said that “all that information was presented to the grand jury.”
In December, another man in the middle district of North Carolina was hit with the same charges for allegedly posting Facebook threats against Trump.
The Trump administration’s first indictment against Comey was over statements he’d made to Congress about leaking information. It ended in failure last year after a federal judge determined that Lindsey Halligan, a politically appointed prosecutor who previously worked in the White House and on Trump’s personal legal defense team, had “no lawful authority” to bring the case. Halligan was booted from her position as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Trump for years has called for Comey to face criminal charges, often referring to “Comey & the gang of treasonous thugs” who the president views as political enemies. Comey’s personal notes memorializing his interactions with the president during his first term led to a criminal investigation that shrouded the White House in a yearslong scandal.
In a statement, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, questioned whether the Justice Department would apply this same legal standard against Trump’s own statements.
“Trump’s DOJ just criminally indicted James Comey for a beach photo of seashells and no other evidence cited. If that’s a crime in America, then what is calling the free speech of six Democratic Members of Congress ‘seditious behavior, punishable by DEATH’? What is suggesting a former Republican Member of Congress should have to ‘face nine barrels shooting at her’ with ‘the guns trained on her face’?” Raskin asked.
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