National Mall Defaced With ‘8647’ Prompting Investigation

The lawn in the National Mall has been discolored with the markings “8647,” prompting an investigation by law enforcement and national parks officials due to its potential message calling for the killing of President Donald Trump.

The markings appeared as Washington D.C. continues to gear up for national celebrations marking the nation’s 250th anniversary. The Interior Department described the vandalism as “political violence.”

“Any threat against the President is taken very seriously by the Department, and our U.S. Park Police will investigate this incident and hold those responsible accountable,” a spokesperson told NBC News.

President Trump is the 45th and 47th president of the United States. The number “86” is slang for getting rid of something, according to Merriam-Webster. The slang has its origins from 1930s soda counters and essentially referenced a menu item that was no longer available or that should be removed, gotten rid of, or thrown out.

The term “8647” has come up before, most notably when former FBI Director James Comey posted on Instagram a picture of seashells that formed the figure. In April, the Justice Department indicted Comey for allegedly making “threats to harm” the President.

Comey has previously said that he did not mean it as a threat or that some people might interpret the number “86” as threatening language.

“I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence,” Comey wrote on Instagram after he had deleted the original post. “It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

The U.S. Park Police announced that they are investigating the discoloration and consider it a threat against the president.

“The cause of the discoloration has not yet been determined,” the Interior Department spokesperson told the outlet. “Grass samples have been collected for testing. The investigation is ongoing.”

Despite White House assertions and the Comey indictment that “8647” is threatening language, a judge ruled earlier this month that a protest flag with the sequence of numbers could stay up and that the numbers alone didn’t pose a threat.

“The Court does not doubt that political violence is on the rise and that it poses a grave threat not just to the targets of the threats but to the country as a whole. But the enormity of that problem does not change the meaning of Plaintiff’s speech, which by any reasonable measure merely advocated for the President’s impeachment and removal from office—that is, ‘to throw [him] out,'” the court ruled.