Former FBI Director James Comey doesn’t anticipate the Trump administration to take any additional motion towards him over an Instagram put up some, together with the president, considered as a name to assassinate the commander in chief.
In his first public remarks since sharing a picture of seashells organized on a seaside to kind the numerals “86 47,” Comey instructed MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace he discovered it “hard to have regret” over the put up that he nonetheless believes appears to be like “totally innocent” — saying it was “crazy” anybody would see it as a name for violence.
“I don’t know how we ended up here,” the ex-FBI chief stated of the commotion that acquired him on the Secret Service’s radar. “It never occurred to me it was any kind of controversial thing, but that’s the time we live in.”
Comey defined that when he noticed the shell formation on the seaside, he believed it was “some kind of political message” relating to the forty seventh president, and his spouse inspired him to {photograph} it.
“We stood over it and I said, ‘I think it’s some kind of political message,’ and she said, ‘’86’ when I was a server’ — she did a lot of working in restaurants – ‘meant to remove an item from the menu when you ran out of ingredients,’” Comey stated. “And I said, ‘Well, to me, as a kid, it always meant to leave a place, to ditch a place.’ I said, ‘That’s really clever.’”
“So then she said, ‘You should take a picture of that.’ And I did, and I posted it on my Instagram account and thought nothing more of it.”
“I heard through her that people were saying it was some sort of a call for assassination, which is crazy,” the previous FBI head continued. “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, who was fired by Trump in Might 2017 after serving as FBI director since September 2013, stated he acquired a name from the Secret Service the evening he posted the cryptic shell photograph and was interviewed by investigators final Friday on the company’s Washington discipline workplace.
“They were pros,” Comey stated of interactions with Secret Service brokers.
President Trump, who survived two high-profile assassination makes an attempt, together with the July 13, 2024, Butler, Pa., try through which a bullet grazed his proper ear, considered Comey’s put up as a name to take him out.
“He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant,” Trump instructed Fox Information’ Bret Baier Friday. “If you’re the FBI director, and you don’t know what that meant, that meant ‘assassination,’ and it says it loud and clear.”
However the former FBI director maintains that the put up was “totally innocent” and signaled that he didn’t remorse it, regardless of taking it down.
“I regret the distraction and the controversy around it, but again, it’s hard to have regret about something that even in hindsight looks to me to be totally innocent,” Comey stated.
When requested about Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s assertion that he must be jailed over the put up, the FBI chief-turned-crime novelist stated the concept was “ridiculous.”
“I hope people know enough about that particular person that they understand where it’s coming from,” Comey stated. “It says something more depressing about the leadership of our current administration. And I just shrug because that’s ridiculous.”
“I don’t – I wouldn’t expect anything to come at me from the shell business.”
