Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asserted on Thursday that federal law enforcement is currently scrutinising a social media dispatch disseminated by erstwhile FBI Director James Comey, which she and fellow Republicans are construing as a tacit incitement to violence against President Donald Trump.

Comey's Instagram post, showcasing a photograph of seashells arranged in what seemed to be the numerical configuration "86 47," was cryptically captioned "cool shell formation on my beach walk," leaving commentators to speculate on the potential semiotic significance of the fortuitous, yet ostensibly random, conchological assemblage.

Several erstwhile luminaries of the Trump administration, Noem among them, alleged that Comey was advocating for the extrajudicial termination of Trump, the 47th president. "DHS and the Secret Service are currently investigating this putative threat, and a proportionate response will be forthcoming," Noem asserted.

Merriam-Webster, the lodestar lexicographical resource for The Associated Press, defines "86" in vernacular parlance as "to discard," "to expunge," or "to deny a patron service," further elucidating that a nascent, albeit infrequent, usage—a semantic extension of the aforementioned senses—denotes "to eliminate," a definition excluded from their current compendium due to its relative novelty and limited diachronic attestation.

The aforementioned post has since been expunged from the digital sphere; Comey later elucidated, "My prior publication of a littoral image, depicting several seashells encountered during an ambulatory excursion, was predicated upon the erroneous assumption that said arrangement constituted a subtle political missive, failing to apprehend the numerological association with acts of violence held by certain individuals."

Comey's initial foray into the digital sphere ignited a firestorm of conservative indignation, culminating in Donald Trump Jr.'s incendiary accusation that Comey had, in effect, issued a thinly veiled call for patricide.

Incumbent FBI Director Kash Patel acknowledged cognizance of the aforementioned communiqué and is currently in deliberation with the Secret Service and its directorate regarding its ramifications.

James Blair, White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs, observed that the appointment coincided with a particularly precarious juncture, given President Trump's ongoing diplomatic sojourn in the Middle East.

Blair's missive on X constitutes a veritable dog whistle, seemingly designed to incite acts of lethal violence against the President of the United States by terrorist factions and adversarial governments amidst his diplomatic sojourn in the Middle East.

Comey, erstwhile Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (2013-2017), faced peremptory dismissal at the hands of President Trump during his initial term, precipitated by the Bureau's investigation into putative links between Russian operatives and the Trump 2016 presidential campaign, an affair later chronicled in Comey's magnum opus, the commercially triumphant memoir, "A Higher Loyalty."

Having transitioned to the realm of crime fiction, he is currently engaged in the promotional circuit for his latest literary offering, "FDR Drive," slated for release this Tuesday.