Did the Secret Service Surveil James Comey Without a Warrant After ’86 47′ Post?
In a May 2025 Instagram post, former FBI Director James Comey shared a photo of seashells on a beach arranged to spell out “86 47.” It was clearly a reference to Comey’s opposition to President Donald Trump—”86″ being a slang term meaning “to throw out,” and Trump being the 47th president.
Right away, Trump supporters took offense, accusing Comey of calling for violence against the sitting president. “Just James Comey causally [sic] calling for my dad to be murdered,” Donald Trump Jr. posted on X.
“James Comey just issued a call to action to murder the President of the United States,” added Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Comey deleted the post, apologized, and was interviewed by the Secret Service.
The controversy was overblown from the very beginning. As Reason‘s Billy Binion noted at the time, Comey’s post was well within the bounds of speech protected by the First Amendment. Even if it wasn’t, the term 86 does not have an inherently violent meaning, and numerous pro-Trump commentators have used it against their own political opponents in recent years.
But it seems that a public apology and an interview were not the extent of the fallout. New reporting suggests the Secret Service surveilled Comey, possibly without a warrant, even though he clearly posed no danger to anyone.
Michael S. Schmidt and Eileen Sullivan of The New York Times reported this week that after Comey posted the image, the Secret Service had him “followed by law enforcement authorities in unmarked cars and street clothes and tracked the location of his cellphone.”
In a sense, it’s understandable to investigate, even when Comey is clearly no threat: Considering the Secret Service very publicly failed to prevent a shooter from nearly killing Trump last year, it makes sense for the agency to take a “better safe than sorry” approach. Just this week, the Secret Service suspended six agents
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