Trump administration secures second federal indictment against James Comey

A federal grand jury has indicted James B. Comey Jr. for the second time since Donald Trump returned to the White House, an extraordinary escalation that puts a former FBI director at the center of two separate federal cases under the same administration.

The new indictment, returned Tuesday, April 28, 2026, centers on an Instagram post in which seashells were arranged to spell “8647.” Prosecutors interpreted the image as a threat against Trump, with some reading it as a call to “86” the 47th president. The Justice Department said the charges were tied to the disclosure of sensitive information, adding a new and politically charged layer to an already combustible legal fight.

The case stands apart because it follows a separate federal indictment filed in the Eastern District of Virginia on September 25, 2025. That earlier case charged Comey with making a false statement and obstruction over his September 30, 2020 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the time, then-U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan said the allegations amounted to a “breach of the public trust.”

The contrast between the two indictments is stark. The 2025 case turned on Comey’s sworn Senate testimony, while the 2026 case turns on a social media post that prosecutors say crossed into threatening conduct. Together, they show a Justice Department pursuing two different legal theories against one of Trump’s most prominent institutional adversaries, one rooted in testimony before Congress and the other in the handling of sensitive information and an online message that prosecutors read as menacing.

The venue also underscores the scale of the fight. The Eastern District of Virginia, which handled the earlier case, serves more than six million residents across Northern Virginia, the Greater Richmond Region, Hampton Roads, Tidewater and surrounding communities. It is one of the nation’s most consequential federal courts, and it has now become the stage for a dispute with clear national implications.

The broader political backdrop is equally charged. Public reporting in 2025 said Trump had pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute Comey just days before the earlier indictment. The Associated Press has noted that Trump himself has faced four criminal indictments and became the first former U.S. president ever to face criminal charges after his New York indictment on March 30, 2023. Against that history, the Comey cases look less like isolated prosecutions than part of a widening cycle of legal and political retribution that is reshaping the boundaries of presidential power and federal law enforcement.