Former FBI Director James Comey continues to feel the backlash from his “86 47” Instagram post, and now the GOP-controlled Congress is taking action.
Comey quickly fell under investigation over the post featuring a photo of seashells arranged to say “86 47.” Many 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.”
But now, lawmakers on the House Republican Study Committee have introduced a resolution that, if passed, would bar Comey from ever holding a position in the federal government, Newsmax reported.
The resolution, which was introduced Friday, “urges the relevant authorities to take every relevant action to ensure that [Comey] is never again permitted to serve as an employee of the federal government” and asks the Department of Justice “conduct a full and comprehensive investigation … and release the findings of that investigation to the relevant House Committees and the public.”
One of the resolution’s co-authors, Texas Republican Rep. August Pfluger, said Comey’s Instagram post was a “shocking betrayal of the trust once placed in him by the American people” and accused Comey of “the unthinkable: calling for violence against our Commander-in-Chief.”
“That someone who once held one of our nation’s most sacred positions of law enforcement would incite such dangerous rhetoric is not just alarming — it’s disqualifying and un-American,” he said. “This resolution demands the accountability and transparency the American people deserve, ensuring Comey never again holds a position of public trust.”
Trump and others in the administration were equally unmoved by Comey’s mea culpa after deleting his post.
“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.
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 when she spoke to Fox News host Jesse Watters.
“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,” Gabbard said.
“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,” she said.