President Donald Trump’s longtime foe, James Comey, has been indicted for a second time by the president’s Justice Department for an Instagram post he shared of seashells on a North Carolina beach.
The former FBI director, 65, was indicted on Tuesday over a post he shared on the social media platform last May that officials said threatened violence against the 79-year-old president, according to CNN.
The post, captioned by Comey as “Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” showed seashells arranged to depict “86 47.”
In slang, the number 86 can mean tossing something out or getting rid of it. Critics of the post took Comey’s statement to imply that he thinks Trump should be killed, given that he is the 47th president.
Republicans and administration officials melted down, with then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announcing an investigation into Comey over his post, which she alleged “called for the assassination” of Trump.
Comey had taken down the post the same day after backlash, saying he “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.
Regardless, Secret Service agents brought the former FBI director in for an hours-long interview in Washington, D.C., over the perceived threat.
The indictment marks Comey’s second since Trump’s DOJ first accused him of lying to Congress over press leaks last September.
U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed the case after ruling the indictments were invalid due to the unlawful appointment of Lindsey Halligan as interim U.S. Attorney.
Comey was fired by the president in 2017 over the Russia election interference investigation and became a fierce critic of Trump.
Efforts to prosecute one of the president’s top detractors failed under former Attorney General Pam Bondi, but seem to have reignited under acting AG Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer.
News of Comey’s indictment comes only hours after a federal judge ruled that his daughter, former Manhattan federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, could pursue her own lawsuit against the DOJ for her alleged wrongful termination by the Trump administration in July of last year.
Maurene, 37, alleged in court filings that her abrupt firing occurred “solely or substantially because her father is former FBI Director James B. Comey, or because of her perceived political affiliation and beliefs, or both.”
