Former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey pointed fingers at President Donald Trump’s administration Monday for their so-called “distraction” surrounding the alleged assassination threat he posted on social media.
FBI director Kash Patel, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other members of the administration have launched investigations into Comey’s now-deleted Instagram post showing a photograph of shells depicting the numbers “8647,” which some have interpreted to be a call for violence against the president. The former FBI director doubled down the image, telling MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that he only regrets the alleged “distraction” created by the Trump administration.
“Did you have any regret about posting the picture?” Wallace asked.
“Well I regret the distraction and the controversy around it. But again, it’s hard to have regret about something that even in hindsight looks to me to be totally innocent for the reasons you said,” Comey said. “But yeah, I didn’t have a gut check. In the Trump-era, I’ve been investigated a lot, audited a lot, and so it’s not my first rodeo. In some strange way, [Trump] can’t get over, maybe because I’ve lived a happy, productive life since leaving. But this has just been a distraction of that life.”
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Comey said he and his wife found the formation of the shells on the beach, then his wife pointed out that the number “86” is code to remove an item from a menu in the restaurant industry. Believing the formation was “clever,” Comey took a photo of it and posted it online, he said.
“We stood over it and I said ‘you know, I think it’s some sort of political message,’” Comey said. “And she said, ‘you know 86, when I was a server,’ she did a lot of work in restaurants, meant to remove an item from the menu when you ran out of ingredients. And I said, ‘well, to me, as a kid it always meant to leave a place, to ditch a place.’ I said ‘that’s really clever.’ And she said ‘you should take a picture of that.’ So I did, and I posted it on my Instagram account and thought nothing more of it until I heard through her that people were saying it was some sort of call for assassination which is crazy. But I took it down.”
The Secret Service called Comey to ask if he would be interviewed by them as part of an investigation into the post, which Comey agreed to do, the former FBI director said. After deleting the post, he said in a Friday statement that he did not realize the number “86” had any association with violence.
“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 of any kind so I took the post down,” Comey wrote.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Fox News on Thursday night that Comey should be arrested for allegedly threatening the president’s life. In response, Comey told Wallace that her response is “ridiculous” and that it is a negative reflection of the current administration.
“It says something more depressing about the leadership of our current administration. And I just shrug because that’s ridiculous,” Comey said.
The White House said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation that Comey’s “doubling down” on the post “underscores his derangement and commitment to divisiveness and politics.”
“Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey, whom President Trump fired for gross incompetence and unfitness for the role, suffers from an incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Harrison Fields said. “His recent doubling down on incomprehensible and dangerous rhetoric directed at President Trump underscores his derangement and commitment to divisiveness and politics rather than loyalty to the country. The appropriate federal agencies are investigating his inexcusable actions and will take prompt action if warranted.”
Trump already faced two assassination attempts on his life during the 2024 presidential campaign. His July 13 rally in Butler, Pa. came to a rapid end after 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks grazed his ear with a bullet. A second would-be assassin named Ryan Routh made an attempt on Trump’s life at Trump’s Florida golf course in September.
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