James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, was indicted on Tuesday over a social media post, signaling a renewed effort by the Justice Department to pursue charges against him after its bid last year ended in failure.
A federal grand jury in North Carolina charged Mr. Comey with making a threat against the president and transmitting a threat across state lines, according to court records.
The case, which centers on an image of seashells that Mr. Comey posted on Instagram, is the latest salvo in the department’s tortured efforts to satisfy the demands of President Trump to go after longtime targets of his wrath. Under the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, the department has sought to accelerate Mr. Trump’s retribution campaign after the president fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, in part, over his dissatisfaction with her effectiveness in bringing cases against his perceived enemies.
Mr. Comey vowed to fight the case.
“I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary, so let’s go,” he said in a video statement posted online. Mr. Comey urged Americans to “keep the faith.”
The new Comey charge stems from an incident nearly a year ago, when the former F.B.I. director, vacationing on the North Carolina coast, posted a photograph on social media showing seashells arranged to say “86 47,” combining the slang term “86,” often used to mean dismiss or remove, with an apparent reference to Mr. Trump, the country’s 47th president.
After an uproar ensued over the post, Mr. Comey deleted it, saying that he did not know that it could be seen as having a violent connotation and that he opposed violence of any kind.
Members of the administration, as well as Mr. Trump’s family, declared that the meaning of “86” was to kill, and that the seashell message amounted to a threat to assassinate the president.
According to court records, the case was assigned to Judge Louise W. Flanagan of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, an appointee of President George W. Bush whose courthouse is in New Bern, N.C.
Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, denounced the case as a sign that the Justice Department’s leaders were “desperate to continue to appease Donald Trump by appealing to his worst instincts and need for petty retribution.”
“Just like the last baseless indictment against Mr. Comey, this is another case of a weaponized Justice Department lashing out on behalf of a vengeful president,” he added.
At a news conference on Tuesday, the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, said that Mr. Comey “disgracefully encouraged a threat on President Trump’s life and posted it on Instagram for the world to see.”
The three-page indictment makes a similar claim, asserting that “a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret” the message written in seashells “as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to President Trump.”
Mr. Comey “did knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the president of the United States,” the document charges.
Showing a defendant’s intent is a critical part of a criminal trial. Asked at a news conference how prosecutors planned to show that Mr. Comey intended to threaten Mr. Trump’s safety, Mr. Blanche said: “You prove intent with witnesses, with documents, with the defendant himself,” adding, “and that’s how we’ll prove intent in this case.”
Court records indicate an arrest warrant was also issued for Mr. Comey, but it was not immediately clear if the authorities would allow him to self-surrender. Mr. Blanche said the arrangements had yet to be worked out with Mr. Comey’s lawyers.
After Mr. Comey posted the seashell image, the Secret Service tracked the location of Mr. Comey and his wife as they traveled from their vacation spot to their home in Northern Virginia.
The Secret Service interviewed him by phone that evening, and Mr. Comey said he had no intent to cause the president harm. The next day, he sat for an in-person interview. Mr. Blanche said that the case had been under investigation the entire time, complicated by legal rules involving digital evidence from Mr. Comey, who is a lawyer.
The indictment also seeks forfeiture of “any property, real or personal, which constitutes or is derived from proceeds traceable to the said offense.” It is unclear what proceeds the Justice Department believes Mr. Comey made from posting the seashells photo online.
It was the second time in the past year that the Justice Department sought to bring charges against Mr. Comey. The first indictment against him was thrown out by a judge, and other efforts against Mr. Trump’s targets have faltered in the face of grand juries or judges.
Last September, Mr. Comey was indicted by a grand jury in Virginia, accused of lying and obstructing a congressional investigation over testimony he gave in 2020. That indictment came after Mr. Trump fired the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia after he and career prosecutors in the office had determined the evidence did not support criminal charges against Mr. Comey.
In the fall, Mr. Trump intensified his public pressure campaign on the Justice Department. He publicly called upon Ms. Bondi to use her power to go after adversaries he has described as “scum,” including Mr. Comey.
Ms. Bondi appeared to embrace the move in a social media post, without mentioning Mr. Comey by name, writing: “No one is above the law.”
The president promptly installed Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide with no previous prosecutorial experience, as the U.S. attorney in Eastern Virginia. Ms. Halligan quickly secured a grand jury indictment against Mr. Comey, and then another in an unrelated case against New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, the New York attorney general who sued Mr. Trump for inflating the value of his business assets.
Both indictments were dismissed in November, after a judge ruled that the Trump administration’s appointment of Ms. Halligan did not follow federal law for such positions.
Even though a judge ruled that certain evidence in the Comey case was off-limits to prosecutors, the Trump administration has signaled its intent to continue its pursuit of Mr. Comey.
Mr. Comey, a former federal prosecutor and deputy attorney general, became F.B.I. director in 2013, and was fired by Mr. Trump in 2017 as the agency was investigating whether Mr. Trump’s 2016 election campaign had conspired with Russian intelligence operatives.
Mr. Comey’s firing led to the appointment of a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to oversee the Russia investigation, which ultimately neither accused Mr. Trump of a crime nor exonerated him.
Mr. Trump’s enmity against Mr. Comey only intensified over the years, as he railed against what he called a “witch hunt.”
Mr. Comey, for his part, became a public critic of the president, comparing him to a mafia boss. During the 2024 campaign, he said that a second Trump presidency would pose “a danger to all Americans.”
News of Mr. Comey’s indictment came the same day that his daughter, Maurene Comey, who was fired as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan last year, won a court ruling allowing her to proceed with a lawsuit against the government. She asserts that she was fired because of Mr. Trump’s animosity toward her father, or because of her “perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both.”
Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.
