The Daily Fuckup

The April 28 indictment of former FBI Director James Comey is already doing more than setting up a criminal case. It has forced the Justice Department to defend both the facts it says support the charge and the way it chose to bring it.

DOJ says the grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina returned an indictment tied to an Instagram post from May 15, 2025, in which seashells were arranged to read “86 47.” Prosecutors say the post amounted to threats against President Donald Trump. The charging document cites 18 U.S.C. § 871(a) and 18 U.S.C. § 875(c), and DOJ says the maximum penalty is 10 years if Comey is convicted. An indictment is an accusation, not a finding of guilt.

The substance of the case is important, but so is the timing. The post sits inside a yearslong clash between Trump and Comey that predates this administration and still colors how almost anything involving the two men is received. That background does not decide the case. It does explain why the indictment was never going to be read as just another routine threat prosecution.

Justice Department leaders have tried to frame the matter as plain enforcement rather than politics. In statements released with the indictment, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel argued that the department and the bureau are accountable to the facts and to the public, not to personal loyalty or institutional history. That is the line DOJ is putting forward. Whether it can sustain that line under scrutiny is a separate question.

For now, the facts that matter are narrow: the indictment was returned on April 28, 2026; it relies on the Instagram post prosecutors say was threatening; and no court has yet resolved what the post meant or whether the government can prove its case. Everything else is the fight around the filing, and that fight has begun before the merits have even been tested.