Former FBI Director James Comey was "calling for the assassination of the president" with a now-removed Instagram post showing seashells on a beach arranged to form the numbers "8647," President Donald Trump insisted in an interview Friday.
"He knew exactly what that meant," Trump said in the interview with Fox News and referred to Comey as a "dirty cop."
"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. And it says it loud and clear."
Comey, who Trump fired during his first administration in 2017, posted the photo on his page on Thursday accompanied with writing reading, "cool shell formation on my beach walk," reports ABC News.
The number "86" is a slang term meaning "to throw out," "to get rid of" or "to refuse service to," but it has also come to be known as "to kill," according to Merriam-Webster.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday that federal law enforcement is investigating the post, which she and other Republicans say is a call for violence against Trump.
FBI Director Kash Patel has promised to support Noem's efforts, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard called for Comey to be put "behind bars" for the post.
"Any other person with a position of influence that he has, people who take very seriously what a guy of his stature, his experience and what the propaganda media has built him up to be, I'm very concerned for the president's life," she said in an interview.
Trump insisted Friday that Comey "wasn't very competent," but he's still "competent enough to know what that meant."
"He did it for a reason," Trump said. "He was hit so hard because people like me, they like what's happening with our country. Our country's become respected again and all this. And he's calling for the assassination of the president."
He deferred to Attorney General Pam Bondi on the matter and said that he doesn'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, I think it's a terrible thing. And when you add his history to that, if he had a clean history, he doesn't."
Trump went on to slam Comey, who has often criticized him in the past and endorsed the presidential campaigns of former Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Joe Biden, as a "dirty cop."
"If he had a clean history, I could understand if there was a leniency, but I'm going to let them make that decision," Trump said.
Comey, after taking down the post, said on Instagram that he "posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. 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."
Trump said that Comey "apologized because he was hit."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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