Former FBI Director James Comey surrendered to law enforcement on Wednesday after the Justice Department indicted him over a 2025 social media post of seashells that allegedly threatened President Donald Trump.

Comey was charged with “knowingly and wilfully” making a threat against the President and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce, according to the indictment. A grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina, which is where Comey’s seashell photo was allegedly taken, approved the charges on Tuesday.

At the minutes-long hearing in Alexandria, Va., on Wednesday, Comey’s attorneys said they intend to file motions for dismissal, arguing that the Justice Department is selectively and vindictively prosecuting their client. Comey was not asked to enter a plea and was allowed to leave with no conditions of release. The date for Comey’s arraignment in North Carolina has not yet been set.

In a video posted on his Substack account on Tuesday, Comey defended himself against the charges.

“I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary, so let’s go,” Comey said. “But it’s really important that all of us remember this is not who we are as a country, this is not how the Justice Department is supposed to be.”

It’s the Trump Administration’s second attempt to prosecute Comey, who has been an outspoken critic of the President since he was fired by Trump as FBI Director in 2017. The earlier indictment, which was based on allegations that Comey had lied in his 2020 congressional testimony over the FBI probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, was dismissed last November after a judge ruled that the prosecutor handling the case, Lindsey Halligan, had been unlawfully appointed.

“Threatening the life of the President of the United States will never be tolerated by the Department of Justice,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press conference on Tuesday. “While this case is unique and this indictment stands out because of the name of the defendant,” Blanche added, “his alleged conduct is the same kind of conduct that we will never tolerate and that we will always investigate.”

When asked if Trump felt Comey’s post had endangered him, he said on Wednesday, “Based on what I’m seeing out there, yeah. People like Comey have created tremendous danger, I think, for politicians and others.”

Why was Comey indicted?

The indictment centers on a photo of seashells arranged to form the shape of “86 47” that Comey posted on Instagram last May, alongside the caption, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

At the time, the post was met with indignation from Trump officials and a large number of Republicans, who saw the image as an incitement of violence against the President. Kristi Noem, then-Homeland Security Secretary who was removed from her post in March, opened a Secret Service investigation into Comey over the post. Comey reportedly voluntarily sat for an interview with the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., in May, during which he told agents that he had seen the shell arrangement while walking on the beach.

Eighty-six is used in slang to mean “to throw out” or “to refuse service to,” according to Merriam-Webster, which notes that it has been used in recent albeit rare cases to mean “to kill.” Forty-seven appears to refer to Trump, the 47th President of the U.S. Together, the numbers have been used by some on social media as a symbol to call for removing Trump from the presidency.

Shortly after, Comey deleted the post and said in a follow-up, “I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. 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 last May, Trump insisted that Comey “knew exactly” what the numbers meant: “A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination.”

“If anybody knows anything about crime, they know ‘86’ … it’s a mob term for ‘kill him,’” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “The mob uses that term when they want to kill somebody, they say, ‘86 the son of a gun.’”

But prosecutors may find it challenging to prove that Comey indeed intended his post as a threat, especially given his clarification soon after. According to standards set by the Supreme Court in 2023, for something to constitute a “true threat,” which is not protected by the First Amendment, the speaker must have “consciously disregarded a substantial risk” that the statement would be perceived as threatening violence.

Comey’s attorneys are also planning to argue that the case is politically driven, especially as similar language has not been prosecuted in the past. In 2022, when Joe Biden was the 46th President, far-right activist and Trump ally Jack Posobiec posted on X, “86 46.”

After Mitch McConnell announced that he was stepping down as Senate Republican leader in 2024, Matt Gaetz, a Republican congressman who represented Florida until 2024 when he resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, posted, “We’ve now 86’d … McConnell.”

Trump himself has been criticized in the past for using violent rhetoric against his political foes, including saying of former Rep. Liz Cheney in 2024, “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her.” He also suggested at a rally in 2016 that “Second Amendment people” could do something to prevent Democratic 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton from appointing judges to the Supreme Court.

Blanche told reporters on Wednesday that it “would be ill advised for anybody to compare a particular statement to another statement that appears similar.”

“That’s not how a grand jury does its work. They don’t just look at a single image and then say, ‘OK, yes, we’ll indict,’ or ‘OK, no, we won’t indict,” Blanche told CBS on Wednesday. “Every investigation is different. You know that, the American people know that.”

Blanche rejected the suggestion that Trump directed him to indict Comey or that the case was politically motivated.

“People should be very wary of threatening the life of President Trump, because that is a crime, full stop,” he said at the Wednesday press conference.

Comey, a longtime foe of Trump 

Trump has for years called for Comey’s prosecution ever since the former FBI director oversaw the bureau’s investigation into alleged ties between Trump’s first presidential campaign and Russian officials in 2016. Comey also led the FBI’s probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of her personal email at the time.

Trump fired Comey, an Obama-appointee, in 2017, less than four years into Comey’s 10-year term. Trump has accused Comey of weaponizing the justice system against him, while Trump has since publicly encouraged the Justice Department to investigate his own perceived political foes. Last September, the Justice Department charged Comey with making false statements to Congress related to disclosures to the press. Comey’s attorneys filed motions to dismiss the case, arguing that he was being vindictively and selectively targeted by Trump’s DOJ as political retribution. Those motions were not decided as the case was dismissed in November on the basis that the prosecutor had been unlawfully appointed.

Since Blanche took Bondi’s place in early April, the DOJ appears to have ramped up its pursuit of Trump’s agenda. Earlier this month, the Justice Department released the first report by the Weaponization Working Group, which Bondi established early into Trump’s second term with the aim of investigating “abuses of the criminal justice process.” The report alleged the Biden Justice Department had unfairly prosecuted anti-abortion protesters. The DOJ fired at least four prosecutors involved in the cases.

On Tuesday, the department also indicted a former senior official at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and top adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci on charges of concealing federal records during the COVID-19 pandemic. Republicans have long accused Fauci and his aides of covering up key information related to the pandemic. Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci, among others, in his last act as President, as he feared “unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions” by the incoming Trump Administration.