A combination of file photos show U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House in Washington, DC, U.S. April 9, 2018 and former FBI Director James Comey on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 8, 2017.
Reuters
President Donald Trump said Friday that former FBI Director James Comey was “calling for the assassination of the president” in Comey’s since-deleted social media post that featured the numbers “8647.”
“He knew exactly what that meant,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News, a day after the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service opened an investigation into Comey’s Instagram post and Trump’s son and others blasted Comey for the post.
“A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know … that meant ‘assassination,’ ” the president said. “And it says it loud and clear.”
“Our country’s become respected again, and all this, and he’s calling for the assassination of the president,” said Trump, who narrowly survived an assassin’s bullet last summer.
Comey has denied that his Instagram post showing what he called a “shell formation” of the numbers “8647” was a threat to Trump, who fired him as FBI director in May 2017.
“I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message,” Comey wrote in an Instagram post on Thursday night.
“I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence,” Comey wrote. “It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”
Source: @comey | Instagram
The term “Eighty-Six” is a verb, which the Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines as informally meaning “to refuse to serve” or “to eject or ban” a customer, and “to reject, discontinue, or get rid of” something.
When Fox News’ Brett Baier noted that Comey said he was not calling for violence, Trump said, “Well, he apologized ’cause he was hit.”
Asked what he wanted to see happen to Comey, Trump demurred, saying that it would be up to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“I don’t want to take a position on it because that’s going to be up to Pam and all of the great people, but I will say this,” Trump said.
“I think it’s a terrible thing,” Trump said. “He’s a dirty cop. He’s a dirty cop. And if he had a clean history … I could understand if there was a leniency. But I’m going to let them make that decision.”
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