Mitt Romney Admits to Secret Twitter Account — He’s Pierre Delecto!

In a lengthy profile on Mitt Romney written by McKay Coppins for the Atlantic, the junior senator from Utah revealed he was the owner of a secret Twitter account.

When the author Coppins asked Romney about the #IMPEACHMITTROMNEY hashtag Trump tweeted into being earlier this month, Senator Romney’s response was reported like this:

“That’s kind of what he does,” Romney said with a shrug, and then got up to retrieve an iPad from his desk. He explained that he uses a secret Twitter account—“What do they call me, a lurker?”—to keep tabs on the political conversation. “I won’t give you the name of it,” he said, but “I’m following 668 people.” Swiping at his tablet, he recited some of the accounts he follows, including journalists, late-night comedians (“What’s his name, the big redhead from Boston?”), and athletes. Trump was not among them. “He tweets so much,” Romney said, comparing the president to one of his nieces who overshares on Instagram. “I love her, but it’s like, Ah, it’s too much.”

One enterprising reader of the article looked up the accounts of Romney’s children and grandchildren on Twitter to see if there was any follower that would stand out.

Romney’s oldest grandchild, Allie Romney Critchlow, has a Twitter account with only 481 followers. Patiently going through them, one could see a Twitter user with the handle @qaws9876 putatively named Pierre Delecto.

The account was opened in July 2011, about a month after Romney announced his run for president. It has no profile pic. It follows 702 other Twitter users — including celebrities Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Tom Brady and Brett Favre.

Pierre Delecto has posted only 10 tweets, mot of them replies.

https://twitter.com/qaws9876/

Later today, Romney did admit that it was his account. Before switching it to private, the Twitter account had accumulated more than a thousand new followers. There was nothing earth-shattering about it, except that now Twitter users have started referring to Romney by his username Pierre Delecto.