James Comey Under Investigation After GOP Says He Called for Assassination

Former FBI Director James Comey is being investigated by the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security over a now-deleted Instagram post, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday. The post showed seashells arranged on a beach to form the numbers "8647," NBC News reports. Republicans were quick to call it out as a threat against President Trump: The "47" referring to Trump's current term as the 47th president, and the "86" referring to a slang term for getting rid of something, CNN reports. Comey was fired by Trump in 2017, just four years into his 10-year term at the helm of the FBI, after the FBI opened an investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He has been vocal in his criticism of Trump since his ouster.

"Disgraced former FBI Director James Comey just called for the assassination of @POTUS Trump," Noem posted on X. "DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately." Others who weighed in included the White House deputy chief of staff, who said the post called for "what can clearly be interpreted as a hit on the sitting president of the United States," and Donald Trump Jr., who accused Comey of calling for his "dad to be murdered." Many others on the right also decried the post, with some calling for Comey to be arrested. Comey weighed in himself in a later post on Instagram in which he explained that while he assumed the shells were spelling out a political message of some kind, he didn't realize some of the numbers were associated with violence. "I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down," he wrote. (More James Comey stories.)