James Comey’s ‘86 47’ post the latest social-media misadventure for ex-FBI boss

US President Donald Trump and his supporters accuse James Comey of advocating violence.

James Comey’s active presence on social media has been unusual for a former FBI director. On Thursday, it landed him in a pickle.

In an Instagram post, Comey wrote “cool shell formation on my beach walk, ” under a photo of seashells arranged in the numbers “86 47.” Trump officials pounced, accusing Comey of calling for President Donald Trump’s assassination, as “86” is old-time slang for “get rid of” and Trump is the 47th president.

Comey later said he didn’t realise the numbers could be associated with violence and took the post down, but not before drawing the attention of the Secret Service and spurring Republican calls for his arrest. Secret Service agents were questioning Comey Friday night at their Washington office, a law-enforcement official said. Comey voluntarily submitted to the interview, the official said.

A now-deleted post of shells arranged to spell ‘86 47’. Picture: Uncredited

“It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind,” said Comey, whose long career in law enforcement included investigations of organised crime and the Italian Mafia as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan.

“He knew exactly what that meant,” Trump fired back Friday on Fox News, adding that he would leave it to Attorney-General Pam Bondi to decide whether to pursue Comey, a case current and former prosecutors said would be difficult to bring and even harder to prove in court.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Trump fired Comey in 2017, during the bureau’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign was connected to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The president and his allies continue to seethe about Comey, complaining of disparate treatment in the way he handled the Hillary Clinton email investigation compared with the Trump-Russia probe, which dogged his first presidency. (The special counsel investigation it spawned concluded the campaign didn’t conspire with Moscow.)

Comey, who has since become a top Trump critic, talked about his career and experience with the president in his memoir, A Higher Loyalty.

His latest social-media dust-up comes just ahead of the publication of his third novel, FDR Drive, a crime thriller about a radical right-wing podcaster who incites murder in the name of patriotism.

Comey didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday.

“He is the former head of the FBI, so he’s got to know that whenever he does something like this there’s going to be eyes on it,” said John Fishwick, who served as the US attorney for the Western District of Virginia during the Obama administration.

“If you’re in law enforcement, it’s different than being a politician. You should know not to fool around with stuff like this.”

Even if an investigation doesn’t end in charges, Fishwick said it could drag out over time, with searches of Comey’s devices and interviews of neighbours “to see exactly what happened here”.

Donald Trump shaking hands with James Comey in 2017. Picture: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News/WSJ

After keeping a low profile immediately after his ouster, Comey later that year confirmed he was the author of a previously anonymous Twitter account under the pseudonym “Reinhold Niebuhr,” the theologian featured in Comey’s undergraduate thesis at the College of William & Mary. A reporter at Gizmodo traced the account to Comey.

The revelation was unusual at the time, as it was unheard of for the leader of the nation’s premiere law-enforcement agency to have a social-media presence, though it appeared he was mostly just liking tweets about the bureau and himself.

Comey had the account concealed, albeit somewhat thinly, under the handle @projectexile7, a reference to a federal gun-violence-prevention program he created when he was a top federal prosecutor in Richmond.

Later in 2017, Comey stirred rumours that he was running for higher office when he tweeted a pensive photo of himself standing alone – wearing running shoes – along a road in Iowa, with the message, “Gotta get back to writing. Will try to tweet in useful ways.”

The curiosity it generated is now a distant memory, as Trump’s current FBI chief Kash Patel has embraced social media for personal and professional purposes.

Patel created the first official X account for a bureau director, where on Thursday he shared that the FBI was aware of Comey’s seashell post and would “provide all necessary support” to the Secret Service.

Dow Jones Newswires