Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted on Tuesday over a photograph of seashells that authorities claimed threatened President Donald Trump, CNN reported.
The indictment was filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina, where a court clerk issued an arrest warrant for Comey.
Comey faces charges of making a threat against the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce, court documents show.
“He publicly posted a photograph on the internet social media site Instagram which depicted seashells arranged in a pattern making out ‘86 47’, which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States," the indictment says.
In May of last year, Comey shared on social media an image of seashells on a beach that formed the numbers “86 47." Critics interpreted the post as a veiled reference to eliminating or harming Trump.
In slang usage, the number 86 often means to remove or dispose of something, while Trump serves as the 47th president. Comey captioned the image: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk."
Republican leaders and administration officials swiftly condemned the post. Then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stated that the Secret Service would investigate what she described as a call “for the assassination" of Trump.
The Secret Service conducted an hours-long interview with Comey in Washington, DC, an unusual measure for a non-specific threat. Comey informed investigators that he discovered the shells during a beach walk in North Carolina.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard commented on Fox News that the former director should be “put behind bars for this" and expressed that she was “very concerned" for Trump’s life.
Comey deleted the post on the same day. He later explained on social media that he had assumed the shells represented “a political message" but “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," he wrote.
In September of last year, the Justice Department charged Comey with lying to Congress regarding leaks to the press. A federal judge dismissed that case late last year after determining that the interim US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia had been improperly appointed without Senate approval.
Comey’s attorneys declined to comment on the new indictment.
Tensions between Comey and Trump date back to before the 2016 election, when the FBI examined the Trump campaign’s possible connections to Russia.
Trump fired Comey in May 2017 after taking office in January of that year. The original probe was later handed over to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose nearly two-year investigation concluded in March 2019 without finding evidence of criminal conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.
Since his dismissal, Comey has remained a vocal opponent of the president and a frequent target of criticism from Republicans in Washington.