Trump says ex-FBI director called for his ‘assassination’

James Comey knew exactly what his recent cryptic social media post meant, the US president asserts

US President Donald Trump has accused former FBI director James Comey of posting a since-deleted social media post calling for his “assassination.”

Comey posted a photograph of seashells spelling out the numbers ‘86 47’ in a now-deleted Instagram post on Thursday. He captioned the cryptic post with “cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

White House officials and Republicans quickly interpreted the post as a coded threat to the 47th US president, arguing the number 86 was used in its slang form to mean, ‘get rid of’ or ‘kill’.

Comey subsequently deleted the image and explained in a separate post: “I posted a picture earlier of some shells I saw 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 isn’t convinced.

“He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant,” he told Fox News in an interview on Friday.

That meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.

“If you’re the FBI director… and you don't know what that meant? Now, he wasn’t very competent, but he was competent enough to know what that meant,” the president added.

Donald Trump Jr. also saw Comey’s Instagram post as a call to murder his father.

Just James Comey causally calling for my dad to be murdered.

This is who the Dem-Media worships. Demented!!!! pic.twitter.com/4LUK6crHAT

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) May 15, 2025

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Comey could face legal consequences for the incident.

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“The rule of law says people like him who issue direct threats against the president of the United States, essentially issuing a call to assassinate him, must be held accountable under the law,” the spy chief said in an interview with Fox News on Friday.

Comey and Trump have been at odds for years. The US president fired him as the FBI director in 2017, during his first term in the White House. Trump later accused him of spreading “false statements and lies” and being a “dirty cop.”

During his 2024 reelection campaign, Trump survived an assassination attempt when a gunman took shots at him during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The would-be assassin grazed Trump’s ear with a bullet, killed a spectator in the crowd behind him, and injured several others. In addition, at least one other plot to kill Trump was foiled in the lead-up to last year’s election.