US President Donald Trump accused former FBI Director James Comey on Friday of calling for his assassination in a coded social media post.
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US law enforcement officials said on Thursday they were looking into the post depicting an image of “8647,” which some supporters of Trump interpreted as a threat against him.
Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017, later took down the post, saying he was unaware the apparent political message could have been associated with violence.
“He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant? That meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News before leaving Abu Dhabi after a four-day Middle East trip.
In US parlance the number 86 can be used as verb meaning to throw somebody out of a bar for being drunk or disorderly, and 47 is code for Trump, the 47th president. Some Trump supporters interpreted the message as one to violently remove Trump from office, including by assassination..
“He was hit so hard because people like me and they like what’s happening with our country,” Trump said in the interview excerpt. “And he’s calling for the assassination of the president.”
He said he would leave further action on the matter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and others.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says on its website that one recent meaning of the term was “to kill” but that it had not adopted that “due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”
The Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting the president, said it was aware of Comey’s post but did not assess its meaning.
“The Secret Service vigorously investigates anything that can be taken as a potential threat against our protectees. We are aware of the social media posts by the former FBI director and we take rhetoric like this very seriously. Beyond that, we do not comment on protective intelligence matters,” Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.
Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of @POTUS Trump. DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.
— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) May 15, 2025
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose agency oversees the Secret Service, said on X that DHS and Secret Service were “investigating this threat and will respond appropriately.”
Current FBI Director Kash Patel said on X that his agency was in communication with the Secret Service about the post and “will provide all necessary support.”
Others were more explicit in assigning a malign meaning to Comey’s post, with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino saying it was a call to assassinate Trump.
US Secret Service Director Sean Curran “is leading the investigation into this threat,” Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, told Fox News on Thursday night.
Comey apologizes, takes down post from Instagram
Comey posted an Instagram photo of the number 8647 formed by seashells on the beach.
“Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Comey said.
But after the uproar from Trump supporters, Comey took the post down, saying he had assumed it was merely 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,” Comey said.
Gabbard dismissed the explanation as absurd, and said the “8647” slogan has been used by anti-Trump protesters and was a veiled call to action against the sitting president.
Early in his first term, in May 2017, Trump fired Comey, who as FBI director had been leading an investigation into the Trump 2016 presidential campaign’s possible collusion with Russia to help Trump get elected.
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