The Daily Fuckup

A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina on April 28 indicted former FBI Director James Comey over allegations tied to an Instagram post from May 15, 2025. The post showed seashells arranged as “86 47,” and the Justice Department says the image amounted to a threat against President Donald Trump. 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 department also says the case is only an accusation, and that Comey is presumed innocent unless and until guilt is proven. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-grand-jury-indicts-former-fbi-director-james-comey-threats-harm-president-trump?utm_source=openai))

According to the indictment, prosecutors allege that Comey “knowingly and willfully” made a threat to take the life of, and inflict bodily harm on, the president by posting the image on Instagram. The filing says a reasonable recipient familiar with the circumstances would interpret the post as a serious expression of an intent to do harm. That is the government’s allegation, not a judicial finding. Comey has publicly said he believed the arrangement was a political message, not a call to violence, and that he removed the post after seeing that people were interpreting it as threatening. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-grand-jury-indicts-former-fbi-director-james-comey-threats-harm-president-trump?utm_source=openai))

The case lands in the middle of a long-running fight between Trump and one of his best-known adversaries. Comey was fired by Trump in 2017 amid the Russia investigation, and he has remained a frequent target of Trump’s criticism. The new indictment guarantees another high-profile legal battle for a Justice Department already under scrutiny for how it handles politically charged cases. But the procedural baseline is simple: the grand jury returned charges, not proof. Whether prosecutors can turn the allegations into a conviction will depend on the evidence they present and how a court reads the disputed post in context. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-grand-jury-indicts-former-fbi-director-james-comey-threats-harm-president-trump?utm_source=openai))