Former FBI Director James Comey has gotten himself into a sticky predicament, and now he has to come face-to-face with the Secret Service.
The former FBI director quickly fell under investigation for an Instagram post in which he showed seashells arranged to say “86 47.”
It is presumed that ’86’ was used in its traditional sense to say “get rid of” and 47 was representative of the 47th president, Donald Trump, who fired Comey early in his first term for malfeasance.
“Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Comey said in the post that has since been deleted, before he posted a follow-up in which he tried to explain it away.
“I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message,” he said. “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.”
That said, Trump did not accept the former FBI director’s explanation, and neither did other members of his administration.
“He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant ‘assassination,’ and it says it loud and clear,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News anchor Brett Baier.
On Friday afternoon, Comey was seen walking into a building that houses federal law enforcement agencies, where he was interviewed about the incident, Fox News reported.
The meeting lasted for around 70 minutes. It’s not clear as of this writing how the meeting between the Secret Service and Comey went. It’s also not clear if any charges are forthcoming.
FBI Director Kash Patel posted on X about the incident and how seriously the agency takes it.
“We are in communication with the Secret Service and Director Curran,” he said. “Primary jurisdiction is with SS on these matters and we, the FBI, will provide all necessary support.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees the Secret Service, posted on X: “DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that what Comey posted was a threat that should land him in jail.
“Are you buying that the former FBI Director didn’t know what ’86 Trump’ meant?” host Jesse Watters asked.
“Absolutely not, Jesse,” Gabbard replied. “That is a ridiculous and insane statement to make, certainly within this context, but especially coming from a guy who’s the former Director of the FBI, a guy who spent most of his career prosecuting mobsters and gangsters, people who know and execute other humans and use this exact lingo of 86.
“Comey himself admitted in his follow-on message that he knew that this was a political statement. Well, the only reason he knew that, Jesse, was because a little over a month ago, a bunch of anti-Trump, anti-Elon Musk protesters were proliferating the use of this 86-47 slogan, which was a veiled call to action to murder the sitting President of the United States,” she continued.
“So for Comey to think that we, the American people, are so stupid as to think that he, as a former FBI Director, former prosecutor, and someone who clearly pays attention to what’s going on, would believe his lie that he didn’t know what this actually was calling for, the dangerousness of this, Jesse, cannot be underestimated,” Gabbard said.
“When we have two assassination attempts on the president’s life, when we have people who look to guys like Comey, who’ve been celebrated by MSNBC and the Democrat elite and CNN as the beacon of integrity, the law and order guy, the guy who would tell the truth no matter what the consequences, this is the guy who’s issuing a hit on President Trump, the president that the American people voted for,” she noted.