EXCLUSIVE James Comey's shell game: 'Threatening' post about Trump wasn't the only time he used a mollusk to send a message
His cryptic 8647 shell arrangement landed him in deep water when it was interpreted as a call to assassinate the Commander-in-Chief.
But longtime anti-Trumper James Comey shore knows what he's doing when it comes to unsubtle political statements.
DailyMail.com can reveal the washed-up Fed previously posted a photo of a clam shell on a beach prior to the 2024 election painted with the words 'Vote Harris' in blue.
'Saw this at the beach,' the former FBI chief claimed in the October 10 post, which reeled in 2,733 likes.
'Ariel understands the assignment,' he added, an apparent reference to Ariel from The Little Mermaid.
Comey, who was fired by President Trump in May 2017 after a four-year stint as FBI Director, has a history of fishy posts.
One week ago, he posted a photo of himself relaxing on the beach engrossed in a novel – his own.
And photos from 2023 show the quirky retiree, 64, attempting to grow a wispy Robinson Crusoe beard.
When he's not posting endless plugs for his recent thrillers, FDR Drive and Central Park West, Comey's feed is a treasure trove of woke causes.
His Instagram is awash with posts promoting trans rights, same sex marriage and, naturally, his steadfast support for Democrat dud Kamala Harris.
But it's the now deleted May 15 snap of seashells spelling out '8647' on a sandy beach that prompted a wave of fury.
Trump supporters decoded his 'cool shell formation' as a chilling threat to '86' (slang for kill, cancel or get rid of) the 47th President of the United States, a survivor of two assassination attempts.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pledged to investigate while Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, suggested Comey 'should be behind bars.'
Trump himself scoffed 'a child knows that meant assassination.'
Comey deleted the post, claiming in a follow up message to 'oppose violence of any kind'.
He was interviewed by the Secret Service but thus far no further action has been taken against the married dad of five.
In an interview Monday with MSNBC, the former New York prosecutor pinned the fiasco on his wife Patrice Failor, who supposedly told him the numbers were code for running out of a particular item in a restaurant.
'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... meant to remove an item from the menu when you ran out of ingredients,"' he told host Nicole Wallace.
'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.'
The long-time Trump antagonist – loathed equally by liberals for reopening Hillary Clinton's email scandal days prior to the 2016 election - called the Secret Service agents who interviewed him 'total pros.'
'In the Trump era, I've been investigated a lot, audited a lot, and so it's not my first rodeo. I'm in some strange way, the relationship he can't get over.
'Maybe because I've lived a happy, productive life since leaving, but this has just been a distraction in that life,' Comey shrugged.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary says 86 is slang meaning 'to throw out,' 'to get rid of' or 'to refuse service to.'
It notes: 'Among the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of to kill.
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