US Justice Department indicts ex-FBI director Comey

The US Department of Justice has brought a new criminal case against former FBI director James Comey, a source familiar with the case says.

The specific charges were not yet clear, nor was it clear where the case would be brought.

Fox News and the Associated Press, citing unnamed sources, reported the case was about a social media post Comey made last year that allies of US President Donald Trump interpreted as threatening.

The post, which was published on Comey's Instagram page in May 2025, 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".

It notes: "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".

US officials investigated Comey in the days following the post, which Comey later deleted.

Comey at the time said he assumed the post 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," Comey said.

Trump, in a Fox News Channel interview in May 2025, accused Comey of knowing "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."

The indictment would mark the second time the Justice Department under Trump has indicted Comey.

Comey was charged with making a false statement and obstructing Congress in September but a federal judge dismissed the case after concluding that the prosecutor who secured the indictment was not lawfully appointed.

The fact that the Justice Department pursued a new case against the ex-FBI director months after a separate and unrelated indictment was dismissed could open the government to claims of a vindictive prosecution and to arguments that it is going out of its way to target Comey, who had overseen the early months of an investigation into whether the Republican president's 2016 campaign had co-ordinated with Russian authorities to sway the outcome of that year's election.

Comey was fired by Trump months into the president's first term and they have openly feuded ever since.

with AP