Former FBI boss interviewed over Trump Instagram post

 Former FBI director James Comey met with the US Secret Service on Friday, after he was called in to discuss a social media post that Donald Trump’s supporters claimed was a threat against the president.

The Secret Service, which is in charge of presidential security, interviewed Comey in Washington on Friday afternoon for about an hour, an official said. Comey appeared voluntarily after being asked to come in.

Federal law enforcement agencies were investigating an Instagram post by Comey on Thursday with a photo of the number 8647 formed by seashells on sand with the comment, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”

In US slang, the number 86 can be used as a verb meaning to throw somebody out of a bar for being drunk or disorderly. Trump is the 47th president of the United States.

Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017, took down the post after a backlash from Trump supporters, saying on Instagram, “It never occurred to me. But I oppose violence of any kind, so I took the post down.”

Some Trump supporters interpreted the message as a call to violently remove Trump from office, including through assassination.

Trump himself on Friday accused Comey of calling for his assassination, rejecting the former FBI director’s explanation that he was not aware of any violent connotation.

“He knew exactly what that meant,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News before leaving Abu Dhabi after a four-day Middle East trip.

Comey was not available for comment on Trump’s accusation.

The “8647” and “8646” themes have been used as political slogans and on T-shirts during the administrations of both Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden, the 46th US president.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says on its website that one recent meaning of the term 86 was “to kill” but that it had not adopted it “due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”

Trump said he would leave further action on the matter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and others.

Secret Service Director Sean Curran “is leading the investigation into this threat,” Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, told Fox News on Thursday.

Gabbard dismissed Comey’s explanation as absurd, and said the “8647” slogan has been used by anti-Trump protesters and was a veiled call to action against the president.

Early in his first term, Trump fired Comey, who as FBI director had been leading an investigation into the Trump 2016 presidential campaign’s possible collusion with Russia.

Comey has been a sharp critic of his former boss, calling him “morally unfit” to lead in a 2018 interview.

Trump himself was accused of using Twitter posts to incite the January 6 rioters who violently stormed the US Capitol.

In addition, Trump last year also posted on social media a video that featured an image of Biden, who was then president, with his hands and feet tied together in the back of a pickup truck.