In April 2026, the Department of Justice announced it had indicted former FBI Director James Comey on charges that he issued a threat to kill or harm the president, stemming from a 2025 Instagram post showing seashells arranged to read
As the news spread, social media users claimed (archived) the conservative influencer Jack Posobiec had shared a seemingly similar post directed at then-U.S. President Joe Biden in January 2022, allegedly writing
The number 86 is slang for "to get rid of." Biden was the 46th president of the United States, and Trump's two nonconsecutive terms mean he is both the 45th and 47th president.
Following Comey's indictment, the journalist Sam Stein shared Posobiec's alleged post on X, writing, "hey @DAGToddBlanche i got another hot tip for an indictment for ya."
hey @DAGToddBlanche i got another hot tip for an indictment for ya pic.twitter.com/tHvruZIdqC
— Sam Stein (@samstein) April 28, 2026
Posobiec's alleged post also circulated on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), Reddit (archived) and Bluesky (archived).
The post (archived) on Posobiec's X account remained live at the time of this writing, with a timestamp of 11:23 p.m. Eastern time Jan. 29, 2022.
That post read only "86 46." Posobiec said on a podcast in April 2026 that the post was a reference to impeaching, not killing or hurting, Biden. Snopes could not independently confirm whether this was truly what Posobiec meant by his post when he published it.
However, by Posobiec's own account, the post was aimed at Biden. Therefore, we rate the claim that Posobiec made the post in question and that its message was aimed at Biden true.
Snopes contacted Posobiec to ask him to elaborate on the difference between his and Comey's posts and await a reply.
Posobiec said post was about impeachment
As social media users recirculated his "86 46" post in 2026, Posobiec argued that his post was different from Comey's because of the context in which he posted it.
Speaking on his podcast, "Human Events Daily," Posobiec said (at 3:34):
As everyone on the "Human Events" audience remembers, in 2021 and 2022 we did a series called "The Shade War Updates," and it was all about whether or not Kamala Harris would launch the 25th Amendment on Joe Biden. Every conservative was talking about "25th Amendment on Biden" or "impeaching Biden." That was the context.
Posobiec posted on X about "Shade War Updates" in late 2021 and early 2022 (archived, archived), around the time he made the "86 46" post.
The conservative influencer argued on another podcast that people in 2022 understood that the "86 46" post referred to impeachment rather than inciting political violence. Posobiec said (at 39:40):
If you go and look at that post, which is still up, you will see that — if you can look at the comments from 2022, there is nobody who took it, in 2022, as anything other than as it was meant — impeachment and 25th Amendment.
Snopes could not independently confirm Posobiec's intended meaning for the post in 2022.
Blanche: '86 46' and '86 47' posts not the same
On April 29, "CBS Mornings" correspondent Major Garrett asked acting Attorney General Todd Blanche whether his department would investigate Posobiec for his "86 46" post directed at Biden. Blanche responded (at 1:55) that the claim Posobiec's and Comey's posts were similar was "completely not true."
Blanche said he did not know whether there had ever been an investigation into Posobiec's post but that "this investigation that we undertook resulted in a two-count indictment. So, you cannot compare, well, what happened last time, what happened this time. Every investigation is different" (time code 2:28).
The acting attorney general also denied (at 4:16) speculation that Trump directed him to pursue the investigation into Comey.
The day before, Blanche answered similarly when a journalist asked (at 12:23) whether the department would prosecute Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who in 2020 did a TV interview with a pin reading "8645" in the background. Trump was at that time the 45th U.S. president.
Blanche replied that every case was different but that threats against the president "will be investigated."
Lawyer for Comey calls indictment vindictive
The DOJ claimed Comey posted the image of the seashells arranged to spell "86 47" on or around May 15, 2025, and in doing so "knowingly and willfully" threatened the president. Comey removed the post the same day and wrote on Instagram (archived):
I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.
The Associated Press reported that Comey appeared in a Virginia court on April 29, 2026, but did not enter a plea. A lawyer for Comey argued that his prosecution was vindictive and selective, the AP reported.
The April 28 indictment is the second against Comey from the second Trump administration. A federal judge dismissed indictments against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James in November 2025, finding that the Trump administration illegally appointed Lindsay Halligan, the prosecutor who brought the charges.
That indictment claimed Comey had made a false statement to Congress and obstructed a congressional proceeding during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the FBI's investigation of links between Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.
At the time, Comey and James both called the indictments an example of the Justice Department being weaponized, The Associated Press reported.
For further reading, Snopes has previously reported on other claims about Comey.