Former FBI chief Comey officially joins Twitter – as himself

Bloomberg News
November 6, 2017 at 10:20PM
FILE -- Then FBI director James Comey during his testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 8, 2017. The timeline of activity that led to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's charges against three former Trump campaign advisers stretches back over two years. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)
Ex-FBI Director James Comey (aka Reinhold Niebuhr) has a new Twitter handle, ­@­Comey. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Former FBI Director James Comey has blown his own cover on Twitter.

Comey, who in May was fired by President Donald Trump — sparking the continuing Russia probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller — updated his Twitter account Monday to put it under his name, with the handle @Comey. He had previously used the name Reinhold Niebuhr, a reference to the late U.S. theologian and intellectual, with the handles @FormerBu and @projectexile7.

In his first official tweet, Comey wrote: "Here's my new handle. Glad to be part of the Twitterverse. Grateful to Reinhold for the cover these last few years."

Part of the reason Comey is now using his real name appears to be to help promote a book he's writing. Comey's new banner includes a close-up photo and a promotion for the book, coming in the spring of 2018, titled "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership."

Comey has tweeted 14 times since joining the social network in February 2014. He has nearly 300,000 followers and he's following 19 accounts. The number of people following Comey began to soar in March after a journalist at Gizmodo tracked down the previously unreported @projectexile7 account and attributed it to Comey.

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Chris Strohm

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