by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News April 28, 2026
Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted reportedly over an infamous 2025 Instagram post of seashells arranged to display the numbers "86 47."
Comey was
indicted on two felony counts:
• Count one: Knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States.
• Count two: Knowingly and willfully did transmit in interstate and foreign commerce a communication that contained a threat to kill the President, Donald J. Trump.
Comey is facing up to 20 years in prison.
In the May 2025 Instagram post, Comey wrote: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
The number "86" is widely understood as restaurant slang to "remove" or "get rid of" something, and "47" refers to Donald Trump as the 47th President of the United States.
After being slammed for what was seen as a threat against Trump, Comey removed the post, claiming he had misinterpreted the shells as a general political message.
"I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message," Comey wrote in a subsequent post. "I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind, so I took the post down."
In an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier, Trump rejected this explanation: "He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you're the FBI director, and you don't know what that meant, that meant ‘assassination,’ and it says it loud and clear."
The second indictment comes after a judge dismissed Comey’s prior charges of false statements and obstruction based on the Constitution’s Appointments Clause.
After independent media reports indicating Comey's post as a threat against Trump, the ex-FBI chief attempted to peddle what is widely regarded as a BS CYA explanation.
“We were walking on the beach, we went to the beach to prepare for this week… and we were walking back towards the road and we saw in the sand someone had arranged shells with numbers. And Patrice, my wife, said, ‘why would someone put an address in the sand?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know’ and we stood over and I said, ‘I think it’s some kind of political message,’ ” Comey said.
“She said you know, when I was a server – she did a lot of work in restaurants – meant to remove an item from the menu when you ran out of ingredients. And I said, ‘well to me, as a kid it always meant to leave a place, to ditch a place.’ And she said well that very clever you should take a picture of that and I did and posted it on my Instagram and thought nothing more of it until I heard through her that people were saying that it was a call for some sort of assassination which is crazy!” Comey said.
In September of last year, the Justice Department first brought charges against Comey, accusing him of lying to Congress over leaks to the press. The case was dismissed late last year by a federal judge who found that the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia had been improperly appointed, having skirted approval from the Senate.
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