Why This Random Egg Might Just Be James Comey’s Secret Twitter Account

On Wednesday night at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance leadership dinner, FBI Director James Comey happened to mention that he has secret Twitter and Instragram accounts:

Gizmodo’s Ashley Feinberg saw a challenge and started doing some research, which eventually culminated in finding what she’s pretty sure is Comey’s account. So, how did she do it? In summary:

• Locating accounts that mention his family members, like his son Brien Comey.
• Finding this Instagram post, which tagged the younger Comey… whose account is private.
• Requesting access to follow the account, which then showed who was following him. Only two of the accounts didn’t have a real name listed. Only one of those two had a number of followers (10) close to how many Comey said he had (nine).
• Googling the name (reingholdniebuhr) and discovered that Comey had written his thesis on the actual Reinhold Niebuhr.
• Examining the only Twitter account using a variation of that name that was going incognito without an avatar, tweets, etc.
• Checking the account’s particulars, which showed a propensity for “liking” tweets about James Comey, and the fact that its only follower was Benjamin Wittes of LawFare. Wittes’ follower to following ratio is lopsided enough to indicate that he wouldn’t have followed the account just because it followed him.

Maybe its not James Comey. But it sure seems like it’s him.

[image via screengrab]

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!