COMEY, TRUMP, AND “8647.” There has been a certain escalatory logic in the resistance to Donald Trump‘s rise to the presidency. In the very beginning, when few took him seriously, they laughed at him. Then they tried to defeat him in the 2016 election. Then, some frantically searched for a way to prevent him from taking office. Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies spied on his campaign and opened an investigation into him. Then, they hoped the investigation would lead to impeachment, which would then lead to his removal. Then, when the Trump-Russia investigation conducted by former Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller went bust, they turned on a dime and impeached Trump for something else.
Then, after Trump left office — he departed still awaiting trial on a second impeachment — a Democratic attorney general in New York filed a lawsuit to destroy his business empire. Then, a Democratic prosecutor in New York filed criminal charges over his businesses. Then, a Democratic prosecutor in Georgia indicted him over the 2020 election. Then, a prosecutor appointed by his successor’s administration indicted him twice, once over the 2020 election and once for his handling of classified information.
Trump’s adversaries dearly hoped the legal attacks, known as lawfare, would work — and by “work,” they meant prevent him from becoming president again. But they didn’t work, and Trump was elected again in 2024.
So, where could the escalatory logic go from there? They tried to stop him with ridicule, then at the ballot box, then with investigations, then with impeachment, then with lawsuits, then with indictments — and none of it worked. It wasn’t brought up much in polite company, but everybody knew in the back of their minds that the next step was to kill him.
And so on July 13, 2024, a would-be assassin in Butler, Pennsylvania, fired several shots at Trump. It was an absolute miracle that he was not killed. He was saved by a last-second turn of his head that meant the high-powered bullet clipped his ear but did not otherwise harm him. Had he turned his head any other way, he would have died instantly. One man in the audience was killed, and others were wounded. Secret Service agents killed the would-be assassin, about whom little is known, even after nearly a year.
Then, in September 2024, a man who had been planning for months to kill Trump was arrested in Florida after lying in wait with a rifle in the bushes by the course where Trump was playing golf. A Secret Service agent took a shot at him, he fled, and he was arrested later.
That brings the story to James Comey. In early 2017, when he was head of the FBI and when Trump was president-elect, Comey ambushed Trump with the false story that Trump watched, and was recorded on videotape, as prostitutes performed a kinky sex act in 2013 in a hotel room in Moscow. Comey worried, with good reason, that Trump would think he was “pulling a J. Edgar Hoover” on him. Indeed, that is exactly what Trump thought, after getting over his initial surprise. The Trump-Comey relationship went downhill from there, and Trump fired Comey in May 2017. Since then, Comey has been a pretty open resistance sympathizer.
On Thursday, Comey posted a picture on social media of shells arranged on a beach to make the number “8647.” Comey wrote, “Cool shell formation on my beach walk.”
The “8647” formulation is a resistance thing — the “86” being slang for dump, get rid of, or kill, and the “47” being Trump, the 47th president. In Trump’s first term, when he was the 45th president, resistance types liked “8645.” Back then, you could buy stickers and other stuff printed with “8645” on Amazon. There is a picture on social media of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) with an “8645” sign on her desk. Now, people can do the same thing with “8647.”
In his post, Comey seemed to pretend that the photo was just a “cool shell formation,” but he must have known what it meant. In any event, Trumpworld jumped into action, accusing the former head of the FBI of threatening to assassinate the president. Donald Trump Jr. posted an image of Comey’s post with the comment, “Just James Comey casually calling for my dad to be murdered. This is who the Dem-Media worships. Demented!!!!”
Then, the president himself weighed in. “He knew exactly what that meant,” Trump told Fox News. “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.”
So was Comey actually calling for Trump’s assassination? He says no. He took down the “8647” post and wrote, “I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assume 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.”
Comey seemed to be saying yes, he knew the shells were an anti-Trump message, but he thought it was a dump-Trump sort of thing and not a call to assassination. Indeed, that is how many in the resistance would view it. So, assume, even though after the things he did as FBI director, he doesn’t really deserve the benefit of the doubt, that Comey was not calling for Trump to be killed.
On the other hand, in the context of last summer’s assassination attempts, one could also say that “8647” has a new, and even darker, meaning. One can’t casually call to “get rid” of Trump without the knowledge that there are some out there, resistance sympathizers, who would like to accomplish that with a gun. So using “8647” today has a sinister, post-Butler feel to it — more so than before an assassin took shots at Trump. In any event, it is remarkably irresponsible for a former head of the FBI to do something such as that.