The U.S. Department of Justice has secured a new federal indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, marking the second criminal case brought against him by the Trump administration in under a year. The charges center on a controversial May 2025 Instagram post in which Comey shared a photograph of seashells arranged on a beach to form the numbers “86 47.”
According to CNN, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter (who ran to CNN to leak the news), the indictment was returned by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. It comes after the Justice Department’s first case against Comey-filed in September 2025 and charging him with making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding related to his 2020 Senate testimony-was dismissed late last year. A federal judge ruled that the interim U.S. Attorney who brought those charges had been improperly appointed without Senate confirmation.
So – the guy acts as Obama and Hillary Clinton’s hatchet man to frame Trump and they’re going after the seashell thing… right.
The Seashell Post at the Center of the New Case
The new indictment revives scrutiny of a social media post that ignited intense backlash last spring. On May 15, 2025, Comey posted a photo on Instagram showing seashells lined up to spell “86 47,” captioned simply: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
The numbers quickly drew sharp criticism from Trump allies. “86” is longstanding slang-commonly used in restaurants to mean “get rid of,” “remove,” or “toss out”-while “47” is widely understood as shorthand for President Donald Trump, the 47th president. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at the time called the post a call for Trump’s assassination and announced a Secret Service investigation. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard publicly suggested Comey should be “put behind bars.”
Comey deleted the post the same day and issued an apology on social media, writing that he had assumed the shells represented “a political message” but “didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.” He added: “It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.” He later told interviewers that he and his wife had simply noticed the formation during a beach walk in North Carolina and saw it as a quirky, possibly restaurant-themed joke.
The Secret Service interviewed Comey for several hours in Washington, D.C.-an uncommon step for what many legal observers described as a non-specific social media image.
Political and Legal Context
The indictment represents a renewed push by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Trump Justice Department to pursue cases against high-profile political opponents. Comey has been a frequent target of President Trump since his firing in May 2017 amid the Russia investigation. Trump has repeatedly accused Comey of helping to “weaponize” the justice system against him and has publicly called for his prosecution.
Legal experts have long expressed skepticism that charges tied to the seashell post would survive constitutional scrutiny. First Amendment protections for political speech are broad, and courts have set a high bar for prosecuting ambiguous or hyperbolic statements as true threats or incitement (see Brandenburg v. Ohio and subsequent true-threat cases). Many analysts viewed the original May 2025 controversy as protected edgy commentary rather than a direct call to violence-especially given Comey’s immediate deletion and clarification.
The first indictment’s dismissal on procedural grounds had already drawn accusations of sloppy or overly aggressive prosecution from critics. Today’s development suggests the administration is undeterred and willing to test the legal waters again with a different set of charges.