Former FBI director James Comey was made the subject of an arrest warrant by the Department of Justice for allegedly calling for the assassination of Donald Trump – by posting a picture of sea shells on Instagram.

Prosecutors insisted in their indictment that the photograph of the shells spelling out the numbers “8647” – which Comey took down shortly after posting it last May when it was interpreted by online conservatives as veiled advocacy for political violence – was “a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the president of the United States.”

Responding in a video on Substack Tuesday, Comey said: “Nothing has changed. I’m still innocent; I’m still not afraid. I still believe in an independent justice system.”

Comey was also targeted by the DOJ last year, when the then-U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, accused him of lying to Congress. He denied the charges before the case was tossed without reaching trial when Halligan was ruled to have overstayed her term in office.

The attempt to prosecute the former director was seen by many as one of several efforts by the Trump administration to go after old enemies of the president, accusations likely to be repeated over the new indictment.

What does 8647 mean?

According to Comey himself, he simply came across the shells already in the formation shown in his post during a walk on a North Carolina beach with his wife, who first pointed them out to him. He “assumed they were a political message,” he said, but claimed not to understand it.

His opponents, however, were quick to allege that the message contained a direct threat levelled at the president.

According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, to “86” means to “to throw out” or “get rid of” and derives from a 1930s slang term for “sold out.”

The number 47, meanwhile, is believed to refer to Trump, as he is the 47th president of the United States.

According to USA Today, citing a book entitled The History and Stories of the Best Bars of New York (2006), the use of “86” as a verb is said to originate with the celebrated pub Chumley’s in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, which stood on 86 Bedford St and was known for tossing its drunken patrons out into the street when they became disorderly – or “86-ing” them.

Merriam-Webster’s acknowledges that “to kill” is a more modern usage of the term but explains it has not adopted it “due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”

The suggestion made by outraged Republicans was that the combination of the two numbers constituted a direct threat against the president’s life.

The uproar ultimately led Comey to delete the image, although he defended his actions after doing so.

“I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence,” he explained. “It never occurred to me, but I oppose violence of any kind, so I took the post down.”

Who is James Comey?

The ex-government official, 65, began his career as a lawyer before taking the helm as the seventh director of the FBI in 2013.

His four-year tenure, which began under former Barack Obama, was soon ended by Trump, who ordered his dismissal in May 2017 four months after entering the White House. Comey had been leading the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election to Trump’s advantage.

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” the president said at the time, “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

A feud between the two men subsequently ensued, with Trump insisting the allegations against him amounted to a Democratic “witch hunt,” a claim he has made about many other issues since.

Trump went on to call Comey “a terrible guy” in 2019 and berated his leadership team at the FBI for being “not clean, to put it mildly,” during an interview on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.

What was the initial reaction to the picture?

The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, then-Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard all claimed the shell image amounted to an overt call for the assassination of the president.

Gabbard said the post was highly concerning because Trump had already faced “two assassination attempts on his life.”

Comey’s successor, Kash Patel, also said at the time that the Secret Service was looking into the matter and MAGA influencer Laura Loomer attempted to marshal the outrage on social media.