James Comey indicted over 2025 social media post allegedly threatening Trump

Former FBI director James B. Comey has been indicted on allegations that a photo he posted on social media in 2025 constituted a dangerous threat to the president.

The indictment by a federal grand jury in North Carolina marks the second time the Justice Department has pursued a criminal prosecution against Comey and is the law enforcement agency’s latest attempt to criminally charge one of President Donald Trump’s longtime political foes.

The two charges stem from a photo that Comey posted online last year showing seashells on a beach that were arranged to write out “86 47.”

Trump is the 47th president; “86” can mean banning or removing someone, but it can also be slang for killing a person.

The three-page indictment states that the seashells were “arranged in a pattern making out ‘86 47’, which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States.”

Comey has suggested that he stumbled on the shell formation during a walk along the beach and did not arrange the shells himself. There is generally a high legal threshold to charge someone with threatening a person based on their language, and legal experts said it would be tough for the Justice Department to build a strong case with just the seashells.

Comey was charged with one count of making threats against the president and another count of transmitting a threat against state lines.

The Justice Department declined to comment Tuesday afternoon. An attorney for Comey also declined to comment.

“Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Comey wrote in the original Instagram post, which he quickly removed after receiving criticism that the phrase communicated the threat of violence. In a follow-up post, Comey wrote that he assumed the shells he saw “were a political message” but said he was not advocating violence.

“Just James Comey casually calling for my dad to be murdered,” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, wrote on social media after Comey’s seashell post.

Federal officials issued a warrant for Comey’s arrest Tuesday afternoon. It’s unclear whether federal authorities will allow the former FBI director to turn himself in and avoid a public arrest.

An initial court appearance for Comey has not yet been scheduled.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan, a jurist in the Eastern District of North Carolina who was appointed to the bench by George W. Bush.

Comey was named FBI director by President Barack Obama. Trump fired Comey four years later over his handling of the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

In a separate case, the Justice Department in September indicted Comey in the Eastern District of Virginia on two counts alleging that he lied to Congress. The Virginia grand jury rejected a third count sought by government prosecutors involving another alleged false statement.

The Virginia indictment against Comey centered on testimony he gave in September 2020 during a hearing on the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation. The indictment was delivered over the rare objections of career prosecutors who insisted there was insufficient evidence to charge Comey.

Ultimately, a judge tossed the indictment, ruling that the Trump administration unlawfully appointed then-U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan to run the office and oversee the case.

The Justice Department has not attempted to bring that case to a grand jury again.

Trump has called for Comey’s prosecution for years.

When Erik S. Siebert, the Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney who led the office before Halligan, concluded that the evidence was insufficient to charge, Trump forced him out of his job.

Last July, the Trump administration fired Comey’s daughter Maurene Comey — a well-regarded federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. She had worked on the criminal cases of Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell.

The younger Comey is suing the government over her firing, saying there was no reason to push her out of the job other than the president’s animosity toward her father or how officials perceived her political beliefs.

The indictment against James Comey comes as acting attorney general Todd Blanche aggressively seeks to bring cases against the president’s foes. Blanche took over leadership of the Justice Department this month after Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, in part because the president was frustrated that she struggled to bring cases against his political enemies.

In the past few weeks, under Blanche’s direction, the Justice Department has barreled ahead with a broad conspiracy investigation into Democratic administration officials.

The Washington Post reported that the probe in part is looking at the decade-old actions of Obama administration officials, including former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. and former CIA director John Brennan, who played significant roles in investigating the Russia ties.

Prosecutors are closest to presenting a case to a grand jury against Brennan on charges that he lied to Congress when he testified about a 2017 intelligence assessment, which found that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election in part to help Trump win, according to people familiar with the probe. Brennan has denied any wrongdoing.

The Justice Department had also been investigating Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell in relation to the Fed’s $2.5 billion overhaul of two office buildings overlooking the National Mall.

Trump has long demanded lower interest rates and has blamed Powell for not making those changes.

The Justice Department dropped the investigation last week, which cleared the way for Trump’s nominee for Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, to be confirmed. Powell’s term as chair ends May 15.

This is a developing story that will be updated.