The former director of the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, revealed that he was secretly on Twitter by the name Reinhold Niebuhr. The account, that goes by the Twitter handle @formerbu, has so far has tweeted six times and follows 18 accounts.
Reinhold Niebuhr was a 20th century American theologian, who died in 1971. He was the subject of Comey’s thesis as a student in 1982, reported The Telegraph.
On Monday, Comey tweeted a picture of himself standing in the middle of a road. “Goodbye Iowa. On the road home,” he captioned the picture. “Gotta get back to writing. Will try to tweet in useful ways.” Almost immediately, his friend and writer Benjamin Wittes confirmed that the account indeed belonged to Comey. “Ok, in light of this latest tweet, I will confirm that @FormerBu is, in fact, James Comey himself,” Wittes wrote.
Comey, thus, confirmed an investigation done by tech news portal Gizmodo in March, which had claimed that the former FBI director was using social media via the @formerbu account.
Comey, under the name Reinhold Niebuhr, made his first tweet in March. After a long hiatus, the former FBI director started tweeting again on October 21, and has been tweeting almost everyday since.
In his testimony in June, Comey had said he had been aware of Russian cyber intrusion in the US from the summer of 2015. He said he had “no doubt” Russia had interfered with the presidential election. He had also said he believed he was sacked because of the Russia investigation.
Comey has been keeping a low profile since he was fired from the FBI by United States President Donald Trump in May. He is currently writing a book about his time in the government, which is likely to hit the stands next year.
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