Comey being interviewed by the Secret Service over ’86 47′ social media post, AP source says
WASHINGTON AP Former FBI Director James Comey was being interviewed by the Secret Organization on Friday about a social media post that Republicans insisted was a call for violence against President Donald Trump according to a law enforcement official The interview is part of an ongoing Trump administration study and is expected to help investigators assess the purpose and intent of the post and whether Comey intended to communicate a threat to the president which he flatly denied Any decision on whether charges should be filed would be up to Attorney General Pam Bondi Trump reported Friday though there s a high bar in proving that comments or posts amount to direct threats of violence The official who certified the interview which is standard for the Secret Organization while studying comments perceived as potentially threatening was not authorized to discuss the matter by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press At issue is an Instagram post from Thursday in which Comey wrote cool shell formation on my beach walk under a picture of seashells that appeared to form the shapes for Merriam-Webster the dictionary used by The Associated Press says is slang meaning to throw out to get rid of or to refuse amenity to It notes Among the bulk current senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones with the meaning of to kill We do not enter this sense due to its relative recency and sparseness of use Numerous Trump administration authorities including Homeland Precaution Secretary Kristi Noem asserted that Comey was advocating the assassination of Trump the th president FBI Director Kash Patel commented the bureau was also supporting the inquiry Required about it Friday during a Fox News interview Trump revealed He knew exactly what that meant A child knows what that meant If you re the FBI director and you don t know what that meant that meant assassination And it says it loud and clear He deflected a question on what he thought should happen saying the decision would be up to Bondi The post was deleted Thursday after it was made with Comey subsequently writing I posted earlier a picture of various shells I saw nowadays on a beach walk which I assumed were a political message I didn t realize chosen folks associate those numbers with violence Trump and Comey have had a fraught dynamic dating back nearly a decade Comey was the FBI director when Trump took office in having been appointed four years earlier by then-President Barack Obama and serving before that as a senior Justice Department official in President George W Bush s administration But the relationship was strained from the start including after Comey resisted a request by Trump at a private dinner to pledge his personal loyalty to the president an overture that so unnerved the FBI director that he documented it in a contemporaneous memorandum Trump fired Comey in May amid an FBI research into probable ties between Russia and Trump s presidential campaign That inquiry later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller would ultimately find that while Russia interfered in the electoral process and the Trump squad welcomed the help there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal collaboration
