Former FBI Director James Comey on Monday addressed critics of his recent “86 47” social media post, calling it “crazy” to believe that the message was intended to serve as a call for President Donald Trump’s “assassination.”
“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 told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace in his first on-camera interview on the Instagram post that Trump claimed to be a call to violence.
Comey, who met with the Secret Service on Friday as the agency and the Department of Homeland Security investigate, weighed in on MAGA outrage over the post he shared last week showing beach shells forming the number “8647.”
While the term “86” is commonly known to refer to ejecting or removing someone (or something) from somewhere (or a menu item that’s no longer available at a restaurant), some have interpreted the term as meaning “to kill.”
Comey, who Trump fired in 2017 after the FBI investigated the president’s 2016 campaign ties to Russia, reflected on how he and his wife discovered the shell formation during a walk on the beach.
