Former FBI director James Comey was trailed physically and digitally by the Secret Service the day after posting what the Trump administration believed to be an assassination threat directed at the president.
In May, Comey posted a photo of seashells on a beach in the shape of the numbers 86 and 47. His caption read, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.” “Eighty-six” is a slang term that means to get rid of something, and has been used in a variety of contexts—from eliminating an ingredient from a restaurant menu to murdering someone.
Trump, who is the 47th president, told Fox News at the time that Comey knew what the numbers meant. “A child knows what that meant,” Trump said. “If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination.”
Several top Trump officials, including Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, took the post as a threat to Trump and subsequently called for criminal charges. Donald Trump Jr. posted on X that Comey was “casually calling for my dad to be murdered” after the shell photo.
Comey, now an author of legal thrillers, deleted the post after the fallout, noting, “I didn’t realize 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.”
After the problematic post in May, Comey was followed by plainclothes law enforcement officials driving unmarked cars. He also had his cell phone location monitored, according to a new report by The New York Times.
Three government officials who leaked the intel to the publication also confirmed Comey and his wife Patrice were shadowed by authorities after leaving their vacation spot on the North Carolina coast all the way back to their Washington home. By tracking Comey’s phone signal, authorities were waiting at his house when he returned.
At the time, Comey volunteered to be interviewed at a Secret Service office in Washington.
The Secret Service claimed the surveillance of Comey was due to “exigent” circumstances, though it’s not clear exactly what those circumstances were.
Sources in The New York Times investigation said the level of surveillance of Comey was under what would normally be reserved for someone who was viewed as an active threat to someone under agency protection.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, Anthony Guglielmi, the Secret Service’s Chief of Communications, said the “threat climate” around President Trump has “never been higher.”
Guglielmi said, “There have been a tremendous number of threats, including two assassination attempts, over the past year. The Secret Service will vigorously investigate any individual, regardless of position or status, that may pose or be perceived as a threat to any of our protectees.”
Guglielmi also clarified, “To preserve operational integrity, we are not able to comment on specific protective intelligence matters.”
The Daily Beast has contacted James Comey for comment.
Comey has been slammed by MAGA figures as an enemy of Trump, including current FBI Director Kash Patel. Following the Instagram post, Patel said, “Everywhere across this country, people are popping up on social media and think that a threat to the life of the president of the United States is a joke, and they can do it because he did it… because he thought it was funny to go out there and make a political statement.”
This week, the FBI launched criminal investigations into Comey and former CIA director John Brennan over allegedly lying to Congress during the Trump-Russia probe. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the pair “disgraceful individuals.”
Comey was appointed by President Obama in 2013, then removed by Donald Trump in 2017.
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