Comey under investigation for ‘86 47’ social media post, Trump officials say

Trump administration officials said Thursday that they would investigate former FBI director James B. Comey, whom they accused of threatening President Donald Trump after Comey posted a picture of seashells on a beach arranged to spell out “86 47.”

Trump is the 47th president; “86” can mean banning or removing someone, but it can also be slang for killing a person.

“Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Comey wrote in the original Instagram post, which he quickly removed after claims that the phrase communicated the threat of violence. In a follow-up post, Comey wrote that he assumed the shells he saw “were a political message” but said he was not advocating violence.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem accused Comey of calling for Trump’s assassination, writing on X on Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service were “investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.” FBI Director Kash Patel said his agency would “provide all necessary support” as part of the investigation.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on Fox News that she believes Comey should be in jail because of the post and accused him of “issuing a hit” on Trump.

Trump survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in July last year.

It is not clear on what grounds the FBI or DHS would investigate Comey, since it is not illegal to take photos of shell formations, even those that spell out an offensive or vaguely threatening message, and post them on social media. The First Amendment protects such activity.

It is the job of the U.S. Secret Service, which is part of DHS, to explore potential threats to the president, but in general such inquiries are launched only when a person is believed to be actively threatening harm.

Used as a verb, “86” originated in hospitality, meaning to refuse service to a customer or that a menu item was not available, and its use expanded over time to broadly refer to rejecting, dismissing or removing, according to its dictionary definition. It can also refer to killing something or someone.

“I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence,” Comey said in his follow-up post. “It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

A spokesman for the Secret Service, Anthony Guglielmi, said in a social media statement that the agency investigates anything that could be taken as a threat. “We are aware of the social media posts by the former FBI Director & we take rhetoric like this very seriously,” he added.

Comey, who began as FBI director under President Barack Obama, has long had a contentious relationship with Trump.

Trump ousted Comey in 2017 as he was leading a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether associates of Trump may have coordinated with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election. Around the time of his firing, Trump accused Comey of giving Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, “a free pass for many bad deeds” when he decided not to recommend criminal charges over her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state.

Neither investigation led to charges. The probes made Comey unpopular in both parties, though Trump and his allies in Congress continued to target Comey long after his ouster, scrutinizing his conduct around the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The Justice Department in 2019 declined to prosecute Comey over his handling of memos that documented his interactions with Trump, though the FBI inspector general criticized Comey for his actions and said he violated agency policy.

On social media, Trump has bashed Comey as a “DIRTY COP” and “Leakin’ Lyin’ James Comey.”

In 2019, Comey was among the former FBI officials Trump accused of treason — a crime punishable by death in the U.S. legal code.

Trump has also been accused of violent rhetoric. In 2023, in reference to calls to Chinese officials by Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”

In an interview with Tucker Carlson in November, Trump said of former congresswoman Liz Cheney, whom he called a war hawk: “Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

During his 2016 campaign, he said that if Clinton were in a position to appoint judges, there is “nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know.”

And during the 2024 election, Trump shared a video on social media that showed a supporter’s pickup truck driving down a road with a graphic on its tailgate that depicted President Joe Biden tied up. In response, Biden’s campaign accused Trump of “regularly inciting political violence.”

At least one other well-known Republican official has used the term “86” before. In February 2024, Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, boasted on X that his political allies had “86’d” three party leaders in recent months. He was responding to the news that Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell would step down from his leadership post in November of that year.

In 2022, the far-right activist Jack Posobiec wrote an X post that said only, “86 46.” Biden was serving as the 46th president at the time. Posobiec is a vocal Trump supporter who has been promoted by Trump on social media and invited to participate in a “new media” briefing at the White House during his second term.

Republicans previously singled out Senate Democrat Leader Charles E. Schumer with allegations of violent rhetoric after he said in 2020 that two Supreme Court justices would “pay the price” if they voted to restrict abortion rights. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued a rare rebuke of Schumer over the language, and Schumer later admitted he “should not have used the words I used.”

Ed Martin, Trump’s former interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, had planned to investigate Schumer over the incident after Martin took office this year. But The Washington Post reported in March that Martin had abandoned the probe, finding it unfounded.