WASHINGTON — Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted again Tuesday, this time by a federal grand jury for threatening to kill President Trump in a May 2025 Instagram post that called to “86 47.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the charges during a news conference, saying that “threatening the life of the president of the United States will never be tolerated by the Department of Justice.”
The indictment, handed up in the Eastern District of North Carolina, lists one count for “knowingly and willfully making a threat to take the life of and to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States.”
The other count was for “knowingly and willfully transmitting an interstate commerce communication that contained a threat to kill the president of the United States.”
Comey, 65, posted an image of seashells arranged on a beach to form the numbers “86 47” on his Instagram on May 15, 2025, before deleting the message.
He later told MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace that he found it a “totally innocent” message to share and it was “crazy” that social media users and others saw it as a call for violence against the 47th president.
The number “86” is restaurant industry slang for getting rid of something, whether unruly patrons or featured menu items.
“There are multiple threats cases very similar to this one, including one where the defendant pled guilty recently to threatening former President Biden,” Blanche noted.
“I say that to say that while this case is unique and this indictment stands out because of the name of the defendant, his alleged conduct is the same kind of conduct that we will never tolerate and that we will always investigate and regularly prosecute.”
Comey issued a defiant statement in response to his federal indictment.
“I’m still innocent. I’m still not afraid. And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary, so let’s go,” he said in a video statement published on his Substack.
Comey’s lawyer, Patrick Fitzgerald, added: “Mr. Comey vigorously denies the charges contained in the Indictment filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina. We will contest these charges in the courtroom and look forward to vindicating Mr. Comey and the First Amendment.”
The charges were first reported by CNN earlier Tuesday. One of Comey’s defense attorneys in his earlier case involving alleged false statements to Congress declined to comment.
Trump survived a third assassination attempt against his life by a crazed gunman who attempted to storm the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday
Two earlier attempts were made by would-be assassins during Trump’s 2024 campaign: at a rally in Butler, Pa., and on his Florida golf course.
Comey was initially indicted on Sept. 25 last year on charges of making false statements and obstruction of justice, only for a federal judge to throw out the case two months later on the grounds that then-interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan was improperly appointed to her position and “had no lawful authority” to secure the indictment.
The earlier case hinged on an exchange Comey had with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) during a Sept. 30, 2020, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, during which the former FBI director denied authorizing leaks to media outlets related to the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation and a separate probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server to store sensitive emails.
“On May 3rd, 2017, in this committee, Chairman [Chuck] Grassley asked you point blank, ‘Have you ever been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?’ You responded under oath, ‘Never,’” the line of questioning from Cruz began.
“He then asked you, ‘Have you ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton administration?’ You responded again under oath, ‘No.’”
The Texas Republican then noted that Comey’s responses to Grassley (R-Iowa) appeared to be at odds with comments made by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who Cruz said “publicly and repeatedly stated that he leaked information to the Wall Street Journal and that you were directly aware of it and that you directly authorized it.”
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“Who’s telling the truth?” Cruz asked.
To which Comey responded, “I can only speak to my testimony. I stand by the testimony you summarized that I gave in May of 2017.”
Comey, who was fired by Trump six days after his May 2017 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, also testified that he “never” was an anonymous source about investigations into Trump or Hillary Clinton, and “no,” he had not authorized subordinates to be anonymous sources for journalists about the probes either.
Yet in other testimonies to Congress and federal investigators, Comey confessed to leaking information to Daniel Richman, a Columbia University law professor whom the top G-man called a “good friend.”
Also in 2017, Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had asked Richman to disseminate memos on Trump’s purported instructions to shut down an investigation of Michael Flynn, the 45th president’s first national security adviser.
Another DOJ watchdog investigation into Wall Street Journal leaks in 2018 found that Comey “agreed it was a ‘good’ idea” to share information with media on the Clinton email scandal, according to McCabe.
“Comey and McCabe gave starkly conflicting accounts” of that conversation, per the DOJ IG report, with the ex-FBI honcho denying McCabe’s account.
The first Comey indictment was filed days before the five-year statute of limitations was set to expire on Sept. 30, 2025.
Comey posted a video on his Substack shortly after the charges were unsealed, saying, “My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way.”
