Donald Trump has claimed a social media post by the former FBI director James Comey was a call for the president’s assassination.
On Thursday Comey posted a picture of seashells spelling out the numbers “8647,” which has been construed by some as a reference to the 47th president – Trump – and the term “86,” which is commonly used in bars and restaurants and means to cancel an order or toss someone out.
“He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant,” Trump told Fox News host Bret Baier in an interview on Friday. “If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant ‘assassination.’ It says that loud and clear.”
The president called him a “dirty cop” and said he will leave a decision on whether to prosecute him over the post to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
On Instagram, Comey posted an image of the seashells with the caption: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
Administration officials quickly fell in line to denounce the post and demand investigations and prosecution.
Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, swiftly claimed Comey was calling for Trump’s assassination and announced the Department of Homeland Security and the US Secret Service were investigating. Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said the agency is “aware” of Comey’s post and that “we take rhetoric like this very seriously.”
The White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich claimed the post “can clearly be interpreted as ‘a hit’ on the sitting president of the United States.”
Intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard called it “a veiled call to action to murder the sitting president of the United States,” and suggested Comey should be imprisoned immediately.
“James Comey should be held accountable and put behind bars for this,” Gabbard told Fox News host Jesse Watters on Thursday.
Comey — whose firing by Trump during his first term led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller — has long been a target of the president and his allies following his investigation to determine whether Trump’s associates coordinated with Russian figures to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
He subsequently deleted the image of the seashells and explained in a separate post that he had posted a picture of “some shells I saw on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message.”
“I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence,” he wrote. “It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”
It’s unclear on what grounds federal law enforcement officials could investigate Comey, as it is not illegal to post pictures of seashells, even if they spell out something the president and his allies claim is offensive or threatening, which is largely First Amendment-protective activity.
Several high-profile right-wing figures have used the term “86” in recent years, including the now-former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who claimed last February that his allies in Congress had “86’d” Republican leadership.
In 2022, the far-right activist Jack Posobiec wrote “8646,” referring to then-president Joe Biden.
Trump himself has been repeatedly accused of using violent rhetoric against his perceived enemies and political opponents, which federal prosecutors and state attorneys have argued inspired a wave of threats against judges, lawyers, officials and their families.
During his 2016 campaign, he said that if his rival Hillary Clinton could appoint judges, there would be “nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”
In 2023, Trump accused General Mark Milley, who was then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of “treason” over a phone call to a Chinese official. “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Throughout his criminal investigations and civil trials, prosecutors routinely warned judges that the president’s rhetoric and social media posts — including sharing an image of himself wielding a baseball bat against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — could derail the prospect of fair trials and intimidate jurors. Law enforcement reported “serious and credible threats” of violence as well as hoax bomb threats and suspicious packages.
Last year, Trump shared a post on Truth Social suggesting former congresswoman Liz Cheney was “guilty of treason” and should be tried in “televised military tribunals” after she joined a congressional investigation into the events surrounding January 6.
“Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face,” he said to Tucker Carlson last year, referencing Cheney, whom Trump accused of being a “war hawk.”
During the 2024 campaign, Trump shared a video showing a supporter’s truck with a graphic depicting a hog-tied Joe Biden.
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