The Daily Fuckup

Federal prosecutors say a grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina indicted former FBI Director James Comey on April 28 over a May 15, 2025 Instagram post that showed seashells arranged to spell out “86 47.” The Justice Department says the indictment charges Comey with threatening the president under 18 U.S.C. § 871(a) and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c). The charging document says prosecutors will argue that a reasonable recipient familiar with the circumstances would take the post as a serious expression of intent to harm President Donald Trump. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-grand-jury-indicts-former-fbi-director-james-comey-threats-harm-president-trump))

The indictment is an accusation, not a finding of guilt. DOJ’s release says Comey is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty, and the filing itself is now the central record for what the government claims he did and why it believes the post crossed a criminal line. Comey has denied wrongdoing and has said he intends to contest the case. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-grand-jury-indicts-former-fbi-director-james-comey-threats-harm-president-trump))

The prosecution arrives with a heavy political charge because of who Comey is and who he has spent years opposing. Trump fired him as FBI director in 2017, and the two have remained locked in public combat ever since. That history does not decide the case, but it guarantees that every step will be read through a political lens as well as a legal one. The government will have to prove that the post was a threat under the statutes it invoked. Comey’s defense will likely press the opposite point: that the message was not a criminal threat at all, no matter how ugly or reckless some viewers found it. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-grand-jury-indicts-former-fbi-director-james-comey-threats-harm-president-trump))

For now, the facts are narrower than the fight around them. Prosecutors say the post was made on Instagram on May 15, 2025. They say it was not a joke or a stray online flourish, but a communication that crossed into threat territory. Whether a court agrees will depend on the evidence, the surrounding context, and how a jury is instructed to read the post. Until then, the case remains a pending indictment and nothing more. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-grand-jury-indicts-former-fbi-director-james-comey-threats-harm-president-trump))