May 16 (UPI) — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Thursday night that DHS and the Secret Service are investigating a since-deleted picture former FBI Director James Comey published online as a threat targeting President Donald Trump.
“Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of @POTUS Trump,” she said online. “DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.”
Comey had published the now-deleted photo to Instagram. It showed shells on a beach arranged to form the numerals “86 47.”
“Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Comey had written in the caption.
The number 86 is widely used code in restaurants and the hospitality industry meaning an item is either sold out, no longer available or should be removed from a dish. The Merriam-Webster dictionary says it is slag meaning to eject, dismiss or remove.
The number 47 suggests Trump, who is the 47th president of the United States.
The president’s eldest child, Donald Trump Jr., published a screenshot of the deleted post to his X account, describing the image as “James Comey casually calling for my dad to be murdered.”
In a follow-up post on Instagram, Comey explained that he had assumed the shells conveyed a political statement but not one suggesting 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,” he said. “It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”
FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement that the FBI is aware of the post “directed at President Trump” and is in contact with the Secret Service.
“Primary jurisdiction is with SS on these matters and we, the FBI, will provide all necessary support,” he said.
UPI has contacted the Secret Service for comment.
Tulsi Gabbard, director of National Intelligence, also described the image on X as Comey issuing “a call to action to murder the President of the United States.”
In an interview with Fox News, Gabbard said Comey should be jailed for it.
“I’m very concerned for the president’s life,” she said. “And James Comey, in my view, should be held accountable and put behind bars for this.”
Comey served as director of the FBI from 2013 until he was fired by Trump during his first term in 2017, during which his office investigated Russian interference into the 2016 election and Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
