FBI director says Comey’s ’86 47′ post sparked ‘copycat’ Trump death threats

FBI Director Kash Patel took to social media on Tuesday to condemn a former Coast Guard officer who was arrested for allegedly threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump, which Patel claimed resulted, in part, from a “destructive” Instagram post shared earlier this year by his predecessor, former FBI director James Comey. 

“This is a guy who threatened President Trump’s life using the ‘86 47’ language,” Patel said of Peter Stinson, the former Coast Guard official who was charged with making threats to kill the president. Stinson, who served from 1988 to 2021 in the Coast Guard – where he held roles as a sharpshooter and FEMA instructor – will appear in federal court for the first time on Wednesday.

Stinson appears to have made multiple, graphic threats against President Donald Trump, according to court documents, including 13 references to the “86 47” message shared in a now-deleted Instagram post by former FBI director James Comey. 

Comey in May posted a photo of shells arranged in the sand with the number “86 47” on Instagram. The post, which he deleted hours later, prompted backlash, including from Trump himself, and sparked at least two interviews with the Secret Service, as Comey later detailed.

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The former FBI director has said in multiple public interviews since that he did not have any dark intentions in sharing the photo and that his wife had associated it with her time as a restaurant server to mean taking something off the menu. 

According to Merriman Webster, “86” is slang that can mean “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.” Trump, of course, is the 47th president. 

“I regret the distraction and the controversy around it,” Comey said of the incident on MSNBC. “But again, it’s hard to have regret about something that, even in hindsight, looks to me to be totally innocent.” 

Comey is not currently under investigation for the post and has said that neither he nor his wife, who was with him at the time, believed it had any nefarious meaning.

Still, the Comeys’ repeated public statements and his compliance with Secret Service personnel have done little to assuage some Trump administration officials, including Patel, who now has Comey’s former job. 

“Tragically, this case was predictable,” Patel told Fox News Digital on Tuesday in regard to Stinson’s alleged threats. 

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“When former Director Comey first pulled his destructive Instagram stunt, it forced the FBI to pull numerous agents off of critical portfolios, taking key personnel away from important initiatives protecting the American people to deal with an overwhelming number of copycats following Comey’s lead and posting threatening messages against the president of the United States,” Patel said.

“Thankfully, law enforcement did excellent work preventing a potential violent actor, and we’ll continue to be on guard,” he added.

Stinson is a Northern Virginia resident, and while it is unclear to what degree Stinson was influenced by the Comey Instagram post or the resulting media coverage of it, court documents show that many of Stinson’s threats were posted long beforehand, including in the run-up to Election Day and during the 2024 presidential campaign. 

Stinson, a “self-identified” member of Antifa, made at least one threat appearing to invoke the July 13 assassination attempt against Trump while he campaigned in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“Those secret service agents moved very slowly,” Stinson said in a post at the time. “They left him in the open way to (sic) long. A missed opportunity will not come around again. They will teach this to future agents as a failure to protect and act.” 

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In February, Stinson posted on his X account, “Sure. This is war. Sides will be drawn. Antifa always wins in the end. Violence is inherently necessary.” 

The most recent post referenced in the document was published on BlueSky on June 11, when Stinson allegedly wrote, “When he dies, the party is going to be yuge.”

Comey did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment on Patel’s remarks nor on any role that the Instagram post in question may have inadvertently played in the case.

News of Stinson’s arrest comes after a federal grand jury indicted a San Bernardino County, California, man just weeks earlier for allegedly threatening to assassinate then-President-elect Donald Trump after he was elected to a second White House term.

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“This defendant is charged with threatening the life of our President – a man who has already survived two deranged attempts on his life,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said at the time.

“The Department of Justice takes these threats with the utmost seriousness and will prosecute this crime to the fullest extent of the law,” Bondi added.

Fox News Digital’s Andrea Margoli contributed to this report.