WASHINGTON (AP) — Former FBI Director James Comey was interviewed by the Secret Service on Friday about a social media post that Republicans insisted was a call for violence against President Donald Trump.
The interview was part of an ongoing Trump administration investigation and was expected to help authorities assess the purpose and intent of the post and whether Comey intended to communicate a threat to the president, which he has flatly denied. Any decision on whether charges should be filed would be up to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump said Friday, though there's a high bar in proving that comments or posts amount to direct threats of violence.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed in a post on X that Comey had been interviewed and said she would “take all measures necessary to ensure the protection” of Trump. The Secret Service is part of the Department of Homeland Security. An interview is a standard part of an investigation into comments perceived as potentially threatening but does not suggest that charges are being considered.
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 “86 47.”
Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by The Associated Press, 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.’ We do not enter this sense, due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”
Numerous Trump administration officials, including Noem, asserted that Comey was advocating the assassination of Trump, the 47th president. FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau was also supporting the investigation.
Asked about it Friday during a Fox News interview, Trump said: “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 not long after it was made, with Comey subsequently writing: “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.
Trump and Comey have had a fraught dynamic dating back nearly a decade.
Comey was the FBI director when Trump took office in 2017, having been appointed 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 2017 amid an FBI investigation into potential 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 2016 election and the Trump team welcomed the help, there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal collaboration.
FILE - Former FBI director James Comey gestures while speaking at Harvard University's Institute of Politics' JFK Jr. Forum in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
BERLIN (AP) — European leaders are expected to cement support for Ukraine Monday as it faces Washington’s pressure to swiftly accept a U.S.-brokered peace deal.
After Sunday’s talks in Berlin between U.S. envoys and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainian and European officials are set to continue a series of meetings in an effort to secure the continent’s peace and security in the face of an increasingly assertive Russia.
Zelenskyy sat down Sunday with U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in the German federal chancellery in the hopes of bringing the nearly four-year war to a close.
Washington has tried for months to navigate the demands of each side as Trump presses for a swift end to Russia’s war and grows increasingly exasperated by delays. The search for possible compromises has run into major obstacles, including control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which is mostly occupied by Russian forces.
The U.S. government late Sunday said in a social media post on Witkoff’s account after the five-hour meeting that “a lot of progress was made.”
Earlier in the day, Zelenskyy voiced readiness to drop his country’s bid to join NATO if the U.S. and other Western nations give Kyiv security guarantees similar to those offered to NATO members. But Ukraine continued to reject the U.S. push for ceding territory to Russia.
Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw its forces from the part of the Donetsk region still under its control among the key conditions for peace.
The Russian president also has cast Ukraine’s bid to join NATO as a major threat to Moscow’s security and a reason for launching the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine renounce the bid for alliance membership as part of any prospective peace settlement.
Zelenskyy emphasized that any Western security assurances would need to be legally binding and supported by the U.S. Congress.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has spearheaded European efforts to support Ukraine alongside French President Emmanuel Macron and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, said Saturday that “the decades of the ‘Pax Americana’ are largely over for us in Europe and for us in Germany as well.”
“Pax Americana” refers to the U.S.’s postwar dominance as a superpower that has brought relative peace to the globe.
Merz warned that Putin’s aim is “a fundamental change to the borders in Europe, the restoration of the old Soviet Union within its borders.”
“If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop,” Merz warned during a party conference in Munich.
Macron, meanwhile, vowed Sunday on social platform X that “France is, and will remain, at Ukraine’s side to build a robust and lasting peace — one that can guarantee Ukraine’s security and sovereignty, and that of Europe, over the long term.”
Putin has denied plans to attack any European allies.
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Ciobanu reported from Warsaw, Poland.
Steve Witkoff, special envoy of the United States, leaves through a hotel garage for talks between representatives of the U.S. and Ukraine in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz,stands in his office in the chancellory in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Maryam Majd)
Steve Witkoff, special envoy of the United States, arrives for talks between representatives of the U.S. and Ukraine, at the Hotel Adlon, in Berlin, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (Kay Nietfeld/dpa via AP)
Jared Kushner, entrepreneur and former chief adviser to President Donald Trump, arrives for talks between representatives of the U.S. and Ukraine at the Hotel Adlon, in Berlin, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (Kay Nietfeld/dpa via AP)
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, right, watches Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arriving at the chancellory in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Maryam Majd)
