A former FBI director is being investigated for a social media post interpreted by US officials as a threat against President Donald Trump.
James Comey, who led the bureau from 2013 until he was fired by Mr Trump in 2017, shared a photo of seashells appearing to form the number 86 47 on Instagram.
He captioned the post: “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
Some US officials have interpreted the post as a threat, alleging that 86 47 means to violently remove Mr Trump from office, including by assassination.
The number 86 can be used as a verb in the US. It commonly means “to throw somebody out of a bar for being drunk or disorderly”.
One recent meaning of the term is “to kill”, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, which said it had not adopted this meaning of 86 “due to its relative recency and sparseness of use”.
The number has previously been used in a political context by Matt Gaetz, who was President Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general but resigned following a series of sexual misconduct allegations.
Mr Gaetz wrote: “We’ve now 86’d…” and listed political opponents he had sparred with who ended up stepping down.
Meanwhile, 47 is supposedly representing Mr Trump, who is the 47th US president.
Mr Comey later removed the post, saying he thought the numbers “were a political message” and that he was not aware that the numeric arrangement could be associated with violence.
“I didn’t realise 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,” Mr Comey said.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
A spokesman for the Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting the president, said they were aware of the post and the agency would “take rhetoric like this very seriously”.
Is the Middle East Trump’s comfort zone?
It’s the Trump era and Putin knows how to exploit it
Iran ‘ready to make nuclear concessions’ – as Trump asks for Qatar’s help getting a deal
Current FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau was aware of the post and was conferring with the Secret Service.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service are investigating the post “calling for the assassination” of Mr Trump and “will respond appropriately”, Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem said on Thursday.
Donald Trump Jr. accused Mr Comey of “casually calling for my dad to be murdered”.
A White House deputy chief of staff, Tayor Budowich, said Mr Comey had put 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,” Mr Budowich wrote on the social media platform X.
Another White House staffer, James Blair, said the post was a “Clarion Call (…) to terrorists & hostile regimes to kill the President of the United States as he travels in the Middle East”.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
Read more US news:
Smokey Robinson under criminal investigation
Cassie challenged over Diddy ‘freak off’ allegations
Mr Trump fired Mr Comey in May 2017 for botching an investigation into 2016 democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the White House said at the time.
While Mr Comey was the director of the FBI, the agency opened an investigation into possible collusion between the Trump 2016 presidential campaign and Russia to help get Mr Trump elected.
