Lieutenant Governor's staffer appears to be behind anonymous anti-McAuliffe Twitter account
An account titled “Fake Terry the Savior” on Twitter has been pushing back against Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe in recent weeks. This is not uncommon at all on Twitter. However, what is uncommon is that it appears a staffer for another gubernatorial candidate is in control of the anonymous account.
After Speaker of the House of Delegates Eileen Filler-Corn (D) endorsed McAuliffe on Monday, the account responded -“You’d think that @EFillerCorn would wait until the campaign started to hear everyone’s pitch. But no, money calls. #NotTerry2021”
Another Tweet on December 9 read “Say no to #Corruption and FBI investigations on fundraising! Say no to @NotTerry2021.”
Lauren Burke, a communications staffer for Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax has often been rumored to be behind anonymous accounts on Twitter. These accounts have been pushing back against journalists, politicians, and anyone else that criticized Fairfax.
Burke’s business account, @BurkeFile, uses a strikingly similar email address as the @Terrymsavior account.
Both accounts below were started within two months of each other in 2015. Twitter does not allow email addresses to be used for more than one account at a time - however, there is a Gmail workaround that allows users to insert a “.” in any location within the email address username (not before or after) and it will still work. Twitter will recognize the address as a different username, but the altered email address will still function on the Gmail platform and redirect everything to the original inbox automatically.
The emails used for these two accounts are one digit apart.
To double-check this method, I created a new Twitter account with the same email address as my personal account, except I included a “.” in the middle of the email username. It worked. I created a second Twitter account with the altered email username and the verification email from the new account was sent to my main address - the same address that I have used for my @jaaavis account for years, even though I registered the new account with the altered email address.
Even though it directs traffic to my main email address, it still shows up with one additional digit when I requested the password on Twitter.
Taking it a step further, a search on the ‘forgot password’ section on Twitter shows that an account is associated with lvburke@gmail.com. The account listed with that email also shows the same last two digits as Burke’s phone number.
In addition, the savior account has been interacting with Burke on Twitter since it was created in 2015.
Burke, who is the spokesperson for Fairfax’s office has not responded to several requests for comment throughout the day on Tuesday.
The McAuliffe campaign declined to comment.
Virginia Scope is an independent news publication that is funded largely by donations and subscribers. As local newsrooms are losing writers each day, we are trying to fill the void to ensure that the public is informed and that leaders are held accountable for their actions.