There are some suspicions that Nunes or someone close to him was running an anonymous Twitter account to defend him that was deleted sometime last night (it's possible Twitter suspended it, unclear right now) a la Mitt Romney with Pierre Delecto. A thread.

Nunes' lawyer, Steven Biss, said in an August court hearing that Nunes actually has four Twitter accounts, not just two as Twitter had asserted in court. So we know Nunes has more Twitter accounts than just his public ones, or at least that he did in August.

Enter @JohnnyCarsons1, which frequently tweeted at the @DevinCow and @NunesAlt accounts, as well as other Nunes critics, always defending him. The language was not bot-like and wasn't trolling, but it was unrelenting defense of everything Nunes was doing.

Then, last night, @AdamParkhomenko was going after the anonymous account (Johnny Carson was of course a comedian who died in 2005, and the avatar was also Carson), accusing it of being a sham account used by Devin Nunes. He subtweeted this at the account: https://twitter.com/adamparkhomenko/status/1193742843266949120?s=21

The account tweeted this back at Parkhomenko:

The "onto me" raised flags with Nunes' critics, who saw it as the user admitting it was Nunes. Many started tweeting at the account accusing it of being Nunes.

The account soon was taken down, though again it remains unclear if it was deleted or taken down by Twitter. I didn't personally see anything the account was doing that I think violated Twitter's terms of service, but obviously I could be wrong.

Unlike Pierre Delecto, we don't have a bunch of details on Nunes' other accounts to know for sure. But there's a lot of thought by Nunes critics that he or someone close to him was running the account, constantly defending Nunes anonymously. End thread.

One note: Obviously if it was somehow confirmed that this account WAS Nunes, the tweets of the account could be used against him in his (currently) four active lawsuits, including against @Twitter @DevinCow @NunesAlt. So makes sense to delete it before tweets could be preserved.

Another note: Good point from @kyledcheney here: https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1193967128707313665