A combination of file photos show U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House in Washington, DC, U.S. April 9, 2018 and former FBI Director James Comey on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 8, 2017.
Reuters
President Donald Trump said Friday that former FBI Director James Comey was “calling for the assassination of the president” in a since-deleted social media post that featured the numbers “8647.”
The numbers were quickly read by people in Trump’s orbit as Comey calling for people to “86,” or get rid of, the 47th president of the United States — Trump.
“He knew exactly what that meant,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News, a day after the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service opened an investigation into Comey’s Instagram post.
“A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know … that meant ‘assassination,’ ” the president said. “And it says it loud and clear.”
“Our country’s become respected again, and all this, and he’s calling for the assassination of the president,” said Trump, who narrowly survived an assassin’s bullet last summer.
Trump’s characterization of Comey’s post echoed that of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who claimed Thursday the former FBI director “just called the assassination of @POTUS Trump.”
White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich said Comey was putting out what can be “clearly be interpreted as a hit” on Trump. Donald Trump Jr. said the ex-director was casually “calling for my dad to be murdered.”
Comey has denied that his Instagram post showing the numbers “8647” was a threat to Trump, who fired him as FBI director in May 2017 after the bureau began investigating contacts between members of Trump’s presidential campaign and Russians.
“I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message,” Comey wrote in an Instagram post on Thursday night.
“I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence,” Comey wrote. “It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”
Source: @comey | Instagram
The term “Eighty-Six” is a verb, which the Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines as informally meaning “to refuse to serve” or “to eject or ban” a customer, and “to reject, discontinue, or get rid of” something.
When Fox News’ Brett Baier noted Friday that Comey said he was not calling for violence, Trump said, “Well, he apologized ’cause he was hit.”
Asked what he wanted to see happen to Comey, Trump demurred, saying that it would be up to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“I don’t want to take a position on it because that’s going to be up to Pam and all of the great people, but I will say this,” Trump said.
“I think it’s a terrible thing,” Trump said. “He’s a dirty cop. He’s a dirty cop. And if he had a clean history … I could understand if there was a leniency. But I’m going to let them make that decision.”
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, in a statement, said, “The Secret Service 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,” Guglielmi said.
The free-speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, in a statement, said that Comey’s post “is political speech protected by the First Amendment.”
“It neither constitutes a true threat nor merits federal investigation,” FIRE’s said in that statement. “86 has a lot of possible meanings, and the idea that spelling it out in seashells and posting it to Instagram is a true threat is quite a stretch. The administration should drop any investigation of Mr. Comey because it’s an unconstitutional waste of time.”