Former FBI Director James Comey doesn’t expect the Trump administration to take any further action against him over an Instagram post some, including the president, viewed as a call to assassinate the commander in chief.
In his first public remarks since sharing an image of seashells arranged on a beach to form the numerals “86 47,” Comey told MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace he found it “hard to have regret” over the post that he still believes looks “totally innocent” — saying it was “crazy” anyone would see it as a call for violence.
“I don’t know how we ended up here,” the ex-FBI chief said of the commotion that got him on the Secret Service’s radar. “It never occurred to me it was any kind of controversial thing, but that’s the time we live in.”
Comey explained that when he saw the shell formation on the beach, he believed it was “some kind of political message” regarding the 47th president, and his wife encouraged him to photograph it.
“We stood over it and I said, ‘I think it’s some kind of political message,’ and she said, ‘’86’ when I was a server’ — she did a lot of working in restaurants – ‘meant to remove an item from the menu when you ran out of ingredients,’” Comey said. “And I said, ‘Well, to me, as a kid, it always meant to leave a place, to ditch a place.’ I said, ‘That’s really clever.’”
“So then she said, ‘You should take a picture of that.’ And I did, and I posted it on my Instagram account and thought nothing more of it.”
“I heard through her that people were saying it was some sort of a call for assassination, which is crazy,” the former FBI head continued. “But I took it down. Even if I think it’s crazy, I don’t want to be associated with violence of any kind.”
Comey, who was fired by Trump in May 2017 after serving as FBI director since September 2013, said he received a call from the Secret Service the night he posted the cryptic shell photo and was interviewed by investigators last Friday at the agency’s Washington field office.
“They were pros,” Comey said of interactions with Secret Service agents.
President Trump, who survived two high-profile assassination attempts, including the July 13, 2024, Butler, Pa., attempt in which a bullet grazed his right ear, viewed Comey’s post as a call to take him out.
“He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant,” Trump told Fox News’ Bret Baier Friday. “If you’re the FBI director, and you don’t know what that meant, that meant ‘assassination,’ and it says it loud and clear.”
But the former FBI director maintains that the post was “totally innocent” and signaled that he didn’t regret it, despite taking it down.
“I regret the distraction and the controversy around it, but again, it’s hard to have regret about something that even in hindsight looks to me to be totally innocent,” Comey said.
When asked about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s assertion that he should be jailed over the post, the FBI chief-turned-crime novelist said the idea was “ridiculous.”
“I hope people know enough about that particular person that they understand where it’s coming from,” Comey said. “It says something more depressing about the leadership of our current administration. And I just shrug because that’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t – I wouldn’t expect anything to come at me from the shell business.”
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