Tipsheet

Wait...Does This Cryptic Message From Comey Mean He's Running for Office?

Former FBI Director James Comey is on Twitter and he sparked widespread speculation Monday over a cryptic tweet showing him standing on an Iowa road wearing tennis shoes.

Comey uses the Twitter account @FormerBu, which goes by the name Reinhold Niebuhr, who was an American theologian and the subject of Comey's college thesis.

Benjamin Wittes, a journalist and Comey’s friend, confirmed the account belonged to the former FBI director, tweeting, “Ok, in light of this latest tweet, I will confirm that @FormerBu is, in fact, James Comey himself."

And here’s the tweet:

“Goodbye Iowa. On the road home. Gotta get back to writing. Will try to tweet in useful ways,” Comey tweeted Monday. He’s currently writing a book about his career with the FBI.

All six of the tweets Comey has written since he joined Twitter in February 2014 include photos—most of which are scenic. Five of them are from the past week from West Point, New York, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and Iowa.

One—from Gettysburg, was captioned “Little Round Top, Gettysburg. Good place to think about leadership and values.”

Another showed a flock of pelicans with Comey writing that he was thinking about Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer:

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

But it was his most recent message that opened the floodgates of speculation. Let’s start off with Washington Post reporter Robert Costa, who said, “Former FBI director Jim Comey tweets this pensive photo from Iowa, wearing running shoes in the home of the caucuses.”

Others were more direct: “He’s running.”

 

So, what do you think?