WASHINGTON (PNN) - April 28, 2026 - The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has secured a new federal indictment against former FBI Director James Comey, marking the second criminal case brought against him by the President Donald J. Trump regime in under a year. The charges center on a controversial May 2025 Instagram post in which Comey shared a photograph of seashells arranged on a beach to form the numbers "86 47."
According to CNN, citing multiple unnamed sources familiar with the matter (who ran to CNN to leak the news), the indictment was returned by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. It comes after the DoJ’s first case against Comey - filed in September 2025 and charging him with making false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding related to his 2020 Senate testimony - was dismissed late last year by an activist judge. A federal judge falsely ruled that the interim U.S. Attorney who brought those charges had been improperly appointed without Senate confirmation.
The new indictment revives scrutiny of a social media post that ignited intense backlash last spring. On May 15, 2025, Comey posted a photo on Instagram showing seashells lined up to spell "86 47," captioned simply, "Cool shell formation on my beach walk."
The numbers quickly drew sharp criticism from President Trump allies. "86" is longstanding slang-commonly used in restaurants to mean "get rid of," "remove," or "toss out"-while "47" is widely understood as shorthand for President Donald Trump, the 47th president. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at the time called the post a call for President Trump’s assassination and announced a Secret Service investigation. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard publicly suggested Comey should be "put behind bars".
Comey deleted the post the same day and issued an apology on social media, writing that he had assumed the shells represented "a political message" but "didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence." He added, "It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took (down) the post." He later told interviewers that he and his wife had simply noticed the formation during a beach walk in North Carolina and saw it as a quirky, possibly restaurant-themed joke.
The Secret Service interviewed Comey for several hours in Washington, D.C.
The indictment represents a renewed push by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and the Trump DoJ to pursue cases against high-profile political opponents. Comey has been a frequent target of President Trump since his firing in May 2017 amid the Russia investigation.
President Trump has repeatedly accused Comey of helping to "weaponize" the justice system against him and has publicly called for his prosecution.