Former FBI director James Comey has been charged with threatening the life of US President Donald Trump and making a threat in interstate commerce, according to an indictment filed on Tuesday, relating to an incident in May 2025 where Comey made a social media post depicting an image of “8647.”
The indictment noted that a “reasonable person” would interpret Comey’s actions as an intent to harm the President.
Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017, had taken down the post, saying he was unaware the apparent political message could have been associated with violence.
Trump had accused Comey of calling for his assassination, saying the former FBI director “knew exactly what that meant.”
“A child knows what that meant,” said Trump in a May 2025 interview with Fox News. “If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant? That meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.
“He was hit so hard because people like me and they like what’s happening with our country,” Trump continued. “And he’s calling for the assassination of the president.”
Trump said he would leave further action on the matter to then-attorney general Pam Bondi and others.
In US parlance, the number 86 can be used as a verb meaning to throw somebody out of a bar for being drunk or disorderly, and 47 is code for Trump, the 47th president. Some Trump supporters interpreted the message as one to violently remove Trump from office, including by assassination.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says on its website that one recent meaning of the term was “to kill,” but that it had not adopted that “due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”
The Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting the president, said in May 2025 that it was aware of Comey’s post but did not assess its meaning at the time.
“The Secret Service vigorously investigates anything that can be taken as a potential threat against our protectees, “Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement. “We are aware of the social media posts by the former FBI director, and we take rhetoric like this very seriously. Beyond that, we do not comment on protective intelligence matters.”