Former FBI Director James Comey accused the Trump Administration of using his controversial post as a "distraction"

Former FBI Director James Comey publicly accused the administration of US President Donald Trump on Monday of creating "distraction" around the alleged assassination threat that the former official recently posted on his Instagram account. Comey's post was a photograph of seashells forming the numbers "8647" on the shore of a beach, which were interpreted by many as acall for violence against the Republican frontrunner. During an interview with MSNBC, Comey defended the image posted on his Instagram and commented that the only thing he regretted was the "distraction" created by the White House.

After being asked about whether he felt no regrets, the former FBI director commented to journalist Nicolle Wallace: "Well I regret the distraction and the controversy around it. But again, it’s hard to have regret about something that even in hindsight looks to me to be totally innocent for the reasons you said. But yeah, I didn’t have a gut check. In the Trump-era, I’ve been investigated a lot, audited a lot, and so it’s not my first rodeo. In some strange way, [Trump] can’t get over, maybe because I’ve lived a happy, productive life since leaving. But this has just been a distraction of that life."

An "clever" idea

At another point in the interview, Comey noted that both he and his wife found the shell formation on the beach and noted that it was his wife who initially explained to him that the number "86" is a code often used in the restaurant industry to drastically remove in item from the menu. The former FBI director detailed that after hearing that explanation he took a picture of the shell formation as he thought it was "clever", later posting it on his Instagram account.

"“We stood over it and I said ‘you know, I think it’s some sort of political message.’ “And she said, ‘you know 86, when I was a server,’ she did a lot of work in restaurants, meant to remove an item from the menu when you ran out of ingredients. And I said, ‘well, to me, as a kid it always meant to leave a place, to ditch a place.’ I said ‘that’s really clever.’ And she said ‘you should take a picture of that.’ So I did, and I posted it on my Instagram account and thought nothing more of it until I heard through her that people were saying it was some sort of call for assassination which is crazy. But I took it down," Comey said during the interview.