James Comey has a book coming out, so he’s looking for attention. He got it.
He posted on Instagram a photo of shells on the beach arranged in the numbers “86 47,” the last two numbers being a little separate and bigger than the first two so as to differentiate them. His accompanying comment was:
“Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
In case you were born yesterday, the number “86” is slang for terminating a person or thing. If a gangster talks about “86’ing” you, you’re toast. The number “47” of course corresponds to President Trump as the 47th President.
Comey got the attention he sought, and then some. Then he deleted the Instagram post, and put up a new post “explaining” that:
“I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”
Wait a minute. In his first post, Comey pretends that the numbers were merely a “cool shell formation” while they were obviously much more than that; they were the numbers “86” and “47.”
So why did he pretend they were just a shell formation in the first post?
In his second message, he contradicts his first in admitting that he was aware it was a “political message” but contends he was not aware that it was a violent one. Really? This is the former Director of the FBI.
Then what did he think it meant? He never says.
The Secret Service charged with protecting the President takes seriously threats to his safety. The latest reports are that they’ve interviewed Comey.
That presents a problem for Comey. It appears likely that Comey himself arranged the shells on the beach. If he maintained his story that he simply stumbled across them, he was probably lying.
Such a lie could be uncovered by the contents of his phone. Multiple pictures of his “shell formation” could be on his phone showing various iterations until he settled on the one he liked.
Such a lie to the Secret Service investigators would constitute perjury, as Comey well knows – since he put people in jail for that.
On the other hand, if he told the truth to investigators, he revealed himself for what he apparently is: A former Director of the FBI who is willing to encourage harm to the President in order to sell books.
In today’s sordid world, it will probably indeed work to sell books. Fellow travelers on the left will buy his book with no intention of reading it, just to support his advocacy of violence. After all, they’ve normalized calls for political assassination, as we saw when they lionized a maniac who murdered a health insurance CEO on the street.
And it may work to accomplish more, too. It may work to achieve its stated goal of 86’ing the President. These are dangerous times, and this sick former FBI Director isn’t helping matters.
the Aspen beat 
Democrat rhetoric is out of control. It nearly got Steve Scalise and many others killed by a Bernie brownshirt..
Remember the Michael Steven Sandford assassination attempt on Trump in 2016 – Las Vegas ? – Plus the other two.
Sorry about this, but I have to put a pin in the old balloon. The slang term “86” is well-known to the people who frequent neighborhood bars and night clubs. Someone who has been banned from some particularly bar or club is said to be “86-ed”.
The term presumably was picked up by the Mafia, but even there it could mean different things. It might not represent an hit on somebody. It mean that someone was banned from a particular city or from a family. It might just mean that someone was being casually shunned.
What James Comey individually presumably meant by it is that he wanted Trump either out of office or deprived of influence even as president.
Unfortunately, there are people around who are going to be encouraged to take things a little further when they see this kind of rhetoric or expression.
Meanwhile, don’t complain about people who buy book they don’t read. If people bought only books they intended to read from cover to cover, authors would be a lot poorer.
People should, in fact, be encouraged to be book collector and to buy book just to make a statement. I should be a published author myself. If I was, I certainly would want people to buy my books even if they were never going to actually read them.
Using the excuse that “86” is in the context of bars and restaurants only makes it more obvious that Comey was in fact advocating the other meaning of “86”. Not many bars and restaurants on that beach. We all know what he meant.
I know what the implication of Comey’s reference was and I said so. I was just point out that the term had an origin outside of the Mafia and was a well know slang term on the street. Comey probably was more familiar with the Mafia context. I doubt he ever hung out a neighborhood bars.
The obvious question is, how did someone that loose in the head ever get to be director of the FBI anyway?