Former FBI director ‌James Comey has professed his innocence after being indicted over a picture of shells on a beach that is being interpreted as a threat to US President Donald Trump.

Comey was charged on Tuesday (US time) with “knowingly and wilfully making a threat to take the life of, or inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States and knowingly and wilfully transmitting a communication in interstate and foreign commerce that contained a threat to kill President Donald Trump”, according to the indictment.

Both charges, released by the US Department of Justice, carry up to 10 years in prison.

It is the second time the department has indicted Comey. Last September, he was charged with making a false statement and obstructing the US Congress. A judge dismissed that case after ​concluding that the prosecutor behind it ‌was not lawfully appointed.

“Well, they’re back. This time about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago,” Comey said in a video statement posted to social media.

“But nothing has changed with me. I’m still innocent. I am still not afraid and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary. So let’s go.”

Comey deleted his offending post within a day. Photo: Instagram

The charges were approved by a grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina where Comey took the photo he posted to Instagram in May last year. It showed an image of seashells arranged to show the numbers “86 ‌47”.

In US parlance, ‌the number ⁠86 can be used as verb meaning to throw ​somebody out of a bar for being drunk or disorderly, and 47 is code for Trump, the 47th president.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary says 86 is slang meaning “to throw out”, “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to”.

“Among the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of ‘to kill’. We do not enter this sense, due to its relative recency and sparseness of use,” it says.

Comey deleted the post a day later. He said at the time he assumed it was a “political message”.

“I didn’t ⁠realise 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,” he said.

In a Fox News Channel interview in May 2025, Trump said Comey knew “exactly what that meant”.

“A child knows what that meant,” Trump said.

“If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.”

Tuesday’s move follows criticism from Republicans and Trump administration officials who considered Comey’s post a veiled threat.

“I think it’s fair to say that threatening the life of anybody is dangerous and potentially a crime. Threatening the life of the president of the United States will never be tolerated by the Department of Justice,” acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche – a former personal Trump lawyer – said.

The department’s pursuit of a new case against Comey, months after a separate and unrelated indictment was tossed out, could open the administration to claims of a vindictive prosecution and to arguments it is going out of its way to target the former FBI chief.

Comey oversaw the early months of an investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign had co-ordinated with Russian authorities to sway the outcome of that year’s election.

Trump fired Comey months into his first term. They have openly feuded since.

-with AAP