WASHINGTON — Former FBI Director James Comey turned himself in on Wednesday to federal authorities after a grand jury indicted him on charges of threatening to kill President Trump in a social media post last year.
Comey, 65, surrendered at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va., near his home, ahead of an initial court appearance. He has denied wrongdoing.
The former bureau boss 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.
The term “86” is commonly used in restaurants to mean that an item should be discarded or that service should be refused. “47” referred to Trump.
“It’s a mob term for ‘kill him’,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon. “They say, ’86 the son of a gun.’”
The president called Comey a “very dirty cop” and said, “People like Comey have created tremendous danger, I think, for politicians and others.”
A North Carolina grand jury indicted Comey Tuesday on one count of “knowingly and willfully making a threat to take the life of and to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States” and one count of “knowingly and willfully transmitting an interstate commerce communication that contained a threat to kill the president of the United States.”
Comey claimed last year that he didn’t create the message made out of shells and that he tweeted the image because he thought it was interesting.
“I said, ‘That’s really clever,’” the ex-FBI director told MSNBC at the time.
“I posted it on my Instagram account and thought nothing more of it, until I heard through here that people were saying it was some sort of a call for assassination, which is crazy.”
Comey maintained his innocence Tuesday, saying: “I’m still innocent. I’m still not afraid, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary. So let’s go.”
The Yonkers-born, New Jersey-raised Comey was previously indicted in September on one charge of making false statements and one charge of obstruction for allegedly lying to Congress about authorizing leaks to the media regarding the investigation into Trump’s alleged links to Russia and a separate probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
A federal judge dismissed that case in November, finding that acting Eastern District of Virginia US Attorney Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully appointed.
Comey, a former federal prosecutor and deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, built a reputation as a hard-charging prosecutor in New York — famously indicting Martha Stewart in 2003 for insider trading while serving as Manhattan US attorney.
As deputy AG, he ran day-to-day operations at the Justice Department and refused to reauthorize a warrantless wiretapping program, prompting a dramatic standoff with White House lawyers.
Trump fired Comey as FBI director in May 2017 as he grew frustrated with the investigation into his 2016 campaign’s theorized collusion with Russia. Ultimately, special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of a conspiracy involving Trump.
Comey later emerged as a consistent critic of Trump, leading to the president to repeatedly attack him in interviews and on social media.