Former FBI Director James Comey released a video statement on Substack Tuesday defending himself after a federal grand jury indicted him for a second time over an Instagram post prosecutors say threatened President Donald Trump. In the video, Comey opened by saying, “Well, they’re back – this time about a picture of seashells on a North Carolina beach a year ago, and this won’t be the end of it,” before insisting that “nothing has changed with me.”
He reiterated, “I’m still innocent, I’m still not afraid, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary, so let’s go,” casting the new case as a test of judicial independence rather than his own conduct.
The indictment charges Comey with two felony counts for allegedly using a 2025 Instagram photo of seashells arranged as the numbers “86 47” to convey a threat to “take the life of, and inflict bodily harm upon,” the president and to transmit that threat in interstate commerce.
Comey has attempted to claim he viewed the shell arrangement as a political statement he stumbled upon on a beach walk, claimed he did not realize some people associated “86 47” with violence, and noted that he took the post down because he opposes violence of any kind. In his new video, he argued that the prosecution is “not who we are as a country” and “not what the Department of Justice is supposed to be,” suggesting the charges reflect a political vendetta from Trump’s DOJ rather than a good‑faith application of the law.
Clips of Comey’s remarks were quickly repackaged on Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms, where short news reels about the “86 47” case drew significant viewership and rapid-fire comment threads. Under one widely shared Instagram reel summarizing the indictment and Comey’s video response, the top comments simply read “Guilty,” as users echoed Trump allies’ claim that the shell photo was a veiled threat against the president.
Earlier uproar over the same image had already drawn angry posts from conservative figures such as Donald Trump Jr., while officials like former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Comey on social media of “calling for the assassination” of Trump and vowed that agencies would “respond appropriately.”
Echoing those sentiments after the new indictment, right-leaning commentators and politicians amplified the case online by arguing that a former FBI director “should be held accountable and put behind bars for this,” even as Comey and his supporters attempt to portray the prosecution as a dangerous overreach with serious First Amendment implications.
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