For the second time in seven months, former FBI Director James Comey was indicted on Tuesday, with the Department of Justice alleging he threatened President Donald Trump when he posted a photo on Instagram of seashells spelling out “86 47.”
To Democrats, the charges were “baseless,” “disgraceful” and “ridiculous.” To Republicans, it depends on who you ask.
Although there were some GOP lawmakers who expressed discomfort with the indictment on Wednesday, most Republicans tried to duck questions — with some even endorsing the charges.
Asked if the Comey indictment was warranted, Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., didn’t miss a beat.
“Anybody that’s gonna threaten the president, any president of the United States, I think that’s where indictments are warranted,” said Donalds, a close Trump ally who’s running for governor in Florida with the president’s endorsement.
Shown a printout of Comey’s post, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said Comey “knows what he’s doing.”
“Comey knows better than that. That was intentional,” Norman said. “He’s not somebody that just got into the political game. So yeah, he should’ve been indicted.”
And Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said Comey’s Instagram post was “obviously a signal.”
“Eighty-six is — either you’re working in a restaurant, or you’re wanting to kill somebody,” Burchett said. “And 47 is obviously President Trump.”
Even Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, one of three Republicans representing a district that Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024, didn’t find fault with the indictment.
“Director Comey can play cute and say, ‘Oh, I didn’t really mean assassination,’” Lawler said. “But when you’re saying ‘86 47,’ I think people are smart enough to understand what that actually means.”
Pressed on whether the conduct was criminal, Lawler — who said he’d defer to the DOJ on the judicial process and underscored the need to take threats of political violence seriously — responded with a tautology. “He was indicted, so seemingly,” he said.
The apparent GOP approval of the Comey indictment came one day after a grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina formally charged the former FBI director with threatening the president and transmitting that alleged threat across state lines.
Comey voluntarily surrendered and made his initial appearance before a judge in Virginia on Wednesday, marking the second time the DOJ has indicted Comey. In September 2025, the former FBI director was charged with making a false statement and obstruction of a congressional proceeding on allegations that he lied during a Senate hearing in September 2020.
In November 2025, a judge dismissed the case, determining that then-interim U.S. attorney Lindsey Halligan was unlawfully appointed.
But unlike the previous indictment, Tuesday’s charges center entirely on a photo Comey posted on Instagram last year showing seashells that spell out “86 47,” with the caption “Cool shell formulation on my beach walk.”
It was the same slang that right-wing activist Jack Posobiec used in 2022, when he wrote on X “86 46” — an apparent reference to then-President Joe Biden. But unlike Trump’s Department of Justice, Biden’s DOJ didn’t prosecute the conservative influencer.
Asked about the differences between the two cases, Republicans tried to sidestep the question.
“That’s really a question for the attorney general, not me,” Donalds said.
Norman, meanwhile, pointed to the assassination attempts against Trump — the most recent being the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.
“The difference is now we’ve had three attempts on the president’s life,” Norman said.
He also said Comey should know better. “He’s not somebody that just got into the political game,” Norman added.
Of course, not every Republican was so ready to endorse the charges.
“If it’s just down to one picture and a piece of sand, doesn’t sound appropriate to me,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who’s retiring at the end of this term, told MS NOW. “If the entire case is premised on ‘86 47’ written in conch shells on the sands of a North Carolina beach, that looks like it’s pretty weak.”
Tillis said he went “to the end of the internet” and concluded that, “I can’t find any example where it represents a threat.”
Ultimately, Tillis said, this was about “a picture in the sand.”
“Is that really the level of pettiness that we’re at now?” he asked.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also told MS NOW she doesn’t believe the social media post was a threat to Trump.
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“It just seems to me that this is more executing on a political grievance,” she said.
Tillis and Murkowski also suggested there was little difference between Posobiec’s post and Comey’s case.
“There’s no difference,” Tillis said, with Murkowski saying the only difference was “who’s going after them.”
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., another retiring Republican, meanwhile, said that, while it was “foolish” for Comey to post the photo, the prosecution is an “overreach.”
“It’s more that weaponization of the law,” he told MS NOW. “And I’m not saying Trump is the only one that’s done it. It happened in the previous administration. But we got to stop the cycle. The cycle’s unhealthy.”
But while there were some Republicans defending and criticizing the charges, most Republicans who MS NOW asked about the indictment fell into a third category: professed ignorance and deference to the DOJ.
Asked about the indictment, Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told MS NOW he didn’t know about “the details of that investigation.”
Presented with a printout of Comey’s post and asked if it was a threatening message, Burlison said he thought the post was “disgusting.
“I think he knew exactly what he was doing,” Burlison said of Comey. “I’ll just let the courts decide whether or no he had intent.”
And on the Posobiec post, it was the same message: “That’s not a topic that is one that I’ve been, like, on top of,” Burlison told MS NOW.
Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., initially said he had not read the details of the indictment. After being shown a photo of Comey’s post, he told MS NOW he wasn’t a lawyer. “I’m a doc, I’m a Marine. I’ll let the lawyers take care of that,” he said.
Asked about the indictment, Rep. Mike Flood, R-Neb., said he also didn’t know the facts of the indictment. And when MS NOW showed him a photo of Comey’s post, he insisted there was more to the story.
“I haven’t had the benefit of knowing what was in the investigation or what the grand jury was presented, but I have to believe there’s more to this than just this picture,” he said.
It was a similar situation on the Senate side, where a handful of GOP lawmakers said they weren’t up to speed on the indictment, and therefore couldn’t weigh in on its merits.
“I’ve not followed that,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said. “Somebody has to explain it to me. I just don’t know what that’s about.”
Asked if he believed “86 47” was a death threat, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said he had “never heard of it before.”
“He’s guilty of far more serious crimes than that,” Johnson said of Comey.
And pressed on the indictment and whether it was a death threat to the president, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo, told MS NOW she was sorry that she couldn’t really comment.
“I don’t know anything about that,” she said.
Jack Fitzpatrick and JM Rieger contributed to this report.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.