Comey: My '86 47' Post Was Clever, Not Sinister

James Comey insists he saw no dark meaning in the image of "86 47" he posted on social media. "It never occurred to me that it was any kind of a controversial thing," the former FBI chief tells MSNBC in an interview. Many saw the image, made by seashells on the beach, as Comey backing the idea of assassinating President Trump, the 47th president—so much so that Comey was interviewed by the Secret Service. Details:

• Comey said he and his wife were walking on the beach and came across the numbers, puzzling over them. His wife first thought they might be an address, and also remembered from her waitressing days that "86" meant to delete a menu item. Comey said he remembered "86" being slang when he was a kid for leaving a boring place, per the AP.
• Later in the interview, however, Comey suggests he did know the message was political. "I thought it was a clever way to express a political viewpoint, and actually I still think it is," he said, but adding, "I don't see it the way some people are still saying it is."

• After their walk, he said his wife suggested he put the "cool" image up on Instagram, and he did. When online chatter began that he was advocating an assassination—"which is crazy," said Comey—he took it down and issued a statement distancing himself from that notion, reports Politico.
• Trump himself weighed in previously: "He knew exactly what that meant," the president told Fox News. "A child knows what that meant."
• Regrets for Comey? "I regret the distraction and the controversy around it," he said in the interview. "But again, it's hard to have regret about something that, even in hindsight, looks to me to be totally innocent."

(More James Comey stories.)