Ex-FBI boss James Comey delivers threat to MAGA amid seashell post

Former FBI Director James Comey (pictured left) warned that MAGA Republicans will 'be deeply sorry' if they continue to attack their enemies with reckless abandon. Speaking to Jen Psaki during a tense MSNBC interview, Comey lashed out at the GOP over what he described as their dangerous dismantling of nonpartisan justice. He warned that Democrats would one day return to power and use the law to exact their own brand of accountability.

Under Trump's leadership, Comey charged, the system is being intentionally destroyed. Comey pointed out the gutting of institutional guardrails - especially the DOJ's Office of Public Integrity, which traditionally oversees prosecutions of corrupt lawmakers. 'These are the people who, through decades and decades, have seen every kind of case,' Comey said about the Office of Public Integrity.

'And so they're there to make sure that the work, no matter who's in charge in the White House, no mater who the attorney general is, that the work is done consistently with previous practice and consistent with the law. I know Republicans these days aren't big in thinking about principle or precedent,' Comey went on. 'They're gonna be deeply sorry that that disappears, because someday there will be a Democratic president and there'll be investigations of Republican officeholders. If I'm them, I sure would want these career people in place making sure that it's done in the right way.'

Comey suggested he agree that the Justice Department could do with scaling back in part, but that Trump had been going about it the wrong way. 'I've long thought that you could shrink the size of some of the Department of Justice headquarters units,' he said. 'But this is like burning down the house and then standing in front of the pile of ashes and saying, yeah, we really did need to retile the guest bath, right? This is destroying the place at a cost that's gonna take years and years to rebuild.'

His comments come just days after Comey found himself under federal investigation for an Instagram post that many in Trump's circle interpreted as a veiled threat against the 47th president's life. The photo was of the seemingly innocuous image of seashells spelling out the numbers '86 47.'

But it had a sinister interpretation with the number '86' being slang for eliminate and '47' a direct reference to Donald Trump 's presidential number. Comey, who has since deleted the post, claimed ignorance of the term but his excuse has done little to quell the firestorm.

Following the post, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem dispatched agents to interview Comey. He was escorted from his suburban Virginia home and questioned at the Secret Service's Washington field office. 'We vigorously investigate anything that can be taken as a potential threat against our protectees,' said agency spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi. The interview, while reportedly standard, sent shockwaves through Washington.

Tulsi Gabbard, now serving as Director of National Intelligence, publicly called for Comey to be jailed. Trump's former FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that the Bureau was also supporting the probe. President Trump, already the target of two assassination attempts in the last year, didn't hold back. '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.'