WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security and Secret Service are investigating a social media post by former FBI Director James Comey that several U.S. officials interpreted as calling for the assassination of President Donald Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday.
In a now-deleted post on Instagram, Comey shared a photo of what he described as a “shell formation” on a beach that formed the numbers “8647.” The post was swiftly condemned by administration officials, Republican lawmakers and Trump allies who said it blatantly targeted Trump, the 47th president of the United States.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, “eighty-six” can informally mean “to get rid of.”
“Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of @POTUS Trump,” Noem wrote on X. “DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.”
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A spokesperson for the Secret Service, which is part of DHS, said the agency “vigorously investigates anything that can be taken as a potential threat against our protectees.”
“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,” Anthony Guglielmi, the agency’s chief of communications said in a statement.
Taylor Budowich, a White House deputy chief of staff, accused Comey of putting out “what can clearly be interpreted as a hit on the sitting president of the United States.”
“This is deeply concerning to all of us and is being taken seriously,” Budowich wrote on X.
The president’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr. accused Comey of “causally calling for my dad to be murdered.”
Comey denied that his post was meant as a threat, saying in a statement that he was unaware people linked the specific numeric arrangement with violence.
“I didn’t realize some folks associate it with violence. That didn’t occur to me when I saw it but I am opposed to violence in all circumstances so I took it down,” he said.
Comey later said in a post on Instagram that he assumed the numbers “were a political message.”
The “eighty-six” wording has been used in a political context before, including by Trump’s one-time attorney general pick Matt Gaetz, who used the expression last year in a post naming Republicans he’s sparred with in the past.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., called for Comey to be arrested, while Chris LaCivita, Trump’s former campaign manager, said he would have had Comey’s home raided over the post.
FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau is prepared to “provide all necessary support” to the Secret Service, which holds primary jurisdiction over the investigation.
Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., called for an “immediate” joint investigation into Comey’s post in a letter Thursday night to Patel and Secret Service Director Sean Curran.
Comey was only four years into a 10-year term when Trump fired him in May 2017.
Under Comey, the FBI opened an investigation into allegations that members of Trump’s 2016 campaign had contact with Russian entities. Trump fired Comey months after that investigation was made public and hinted that the probe was among the factors that led to Comey’s termination.
The primary motive for his dismissal, the White House said at the time, was a conclusion by senior Justice Department officials that Comey bungled an investigation into 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.
The 2024 presidential campaign saw two assassination attempts against Trump. The first was at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a gunman’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear. Secret Service fatally shot the gunman, who killed Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief, and injured two others at the July rally.
Months later, the Secret Service foiled a second assassination attempt on Trump at a golf course near his Mar-a-Lago residence after an agent spotted a man with a rifle outside of the property.
The alleged perpetrator faces several federal and state charges, including the attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence and assaulting a federal officer. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Comey has drawn the ire of both political parties in recent years. Democrats derided his decision to publicly announce days before the 2016 election that an investigation into Clinton’s use of emails had been reopened, with the former secretary of state herself asserting in 2017 that the announcement aided Trump’s victory.
After his termination, Comey became a frequent critic of Trump, calling him in a television interview “morally unfit to be president” and later characterizing him as a “unethical” man “untethered to truth” in a book he released in 2018 that also likened his administration to a mafia organization.
Comey’s criticism of Trump, and his decision to release a book as investigations he opened remained ongoing, has made him a frequent target of Republicans.
The former FBI director is now a fiction writer. He’s promoting the release of a new novel, with numerous posts about the book on his Instagram account, including one of him reading on a beach.
Syedah Asghar contributed.
