Former FBI director James Comey has been on Twitter for months now, but on Monday he confirmed it's actually him and is starting to ramp up his tweets. The results have been both weird and highly meme-able.
Goodbye Iowa. On the road home. Gotta get back to writing. Will try to tweet in useful ways.
Comey, as you may recall, has had quite a bit of free time on his hands since he was fired in May this year — which feels like several lifetimes ago — kicking off the ongoing special counsel investigation of President Donald Trump.
There's been some speculation over whether the @FormerBu account was the real Comey, but today's tweet was Extra Confirmed™ by his BFF and Comey Memo Trustee Benjamin Wittes.
Ok, in light of this latest tweet, I will confirm that @FormerBu is, in fact, James Comey himself. https://t.co/6QbhOG7Qzp
I mean, it helped that Comey himself was in the photo, but whatever.
Also, it's worth noting that Comey's display name "Reinhold Neibuhr" isn't some weird Halloween joke, but instead a reference to the noted philosopher, who was the subject of Comey's thesis.
It's unclear exactly who took the photo, but it sparked a ton of ~speculation~ about Comey running for president, since Iowa is traditionally first on the primary calendar.
Former FBI director Jim Comey tweets this pensive photo from Iowa, wearing running shoes in the home of the caucuse… https://t.co/NjGgnIq68f
(For the record: He is not running.)
Official rain on the He's Running parade: Comey's father-in-law celebrated his 90th birthday in Iowa this weekend. https://t.co/08wfm0tJQW
But since this is the internet, it also prompted a slew of memes.
@FormerBu
Photoshop: the one true friend left to us in 2017.
James Comey is so tall
@darth @FormerBu Fixed
But what about his other tweets? A look at the others, including this one from Sunday, show that Comey's got a weirdly pensive thing going, like if those old Jack Handey quotes were serious.
Watching migrating white pelicans in Iowa thinking about Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer.
It's just some birds flying in a V, which is nice, but it's also weirdly despondency-inducing? (Also, let's ignore the fact that the tweet itself seems to imply that the pelicans are the ones thinking about the Serenity Prayer.)
"Surely the one before that is less weird," you think. But no. It's James Comey. Standing in a cornfield. Like he's waiting for his ghost dad to emerge with a bunch of baseball players.
Good to be back in Iowa.
Still unclear who took this photo or just why the former head of the nation's law enforcement agency was in the middle of a field at sunset.
Honestly, poorly framed, depressing photographs appears to be Comey's Thing, like this one from Gettysburg, an assumed subtweet of the guy who fired him.
Little Round Top, Gettysburg. Good place to think about leadership and values.
Maybe it's just how much Comey employs the use of negative space that leaves the viewer feeling almost lonely? Idk but it's definitely a thing that plays throughout his five most recent tweets.
Beautiful fall day at West Point. Lone kayaker on the Hudson.
In any case, the account has been assumed to be Comey's since Ashley Feinberg, then of Gizmodo and now at HuffPost, first uncovered it in March. Comey's response was his first tweet ever and a taste of the shadiness to come.
https://t.co/L5ehuMFGat
(It's not clear when the account's handle changed from its former @projectexile7 to the current @FormerBu.)
Feinberg, for her part, is taking the confirmation with solemn grace at the responsibilities now before her.
it is my understanding that legally I am the fbi director now, i’m sorry but that’s the way law works