AG Holder on Twitter? Not So Fast

February 24, 2009 1:25 PM

ABC News' Theresa Cook reports: Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t take the press with him on his trip to Guantanamo Bay Monday, but did he instead offer a window into his thoughts via microblogging site Twitter?

“Some scary dudes in this gitmo place. May have to ship em to China lol.”

Maybe not.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the DOJ-seal-emblazoned site at http://twitter.com/ericholder/, but there are plenty of signs that it's not really him:  The offer to bring back rum and cigars, the hope to meet Cuban leader Raul Castro “if can work it in” and the entry about a career DOJ employee asking him not to tweet from Gitmo.

“On second thought, I'm AG. I make the rules. I'm in ur gitmo. Settin free ur terrists,” the next post said.

And the most recent, expressing shock about an entry from gossip blogger Perez Hilton speculating that starlet Lindsay Lohan is dabbling with drugs.  "Teh girl needs help," the apparently faux-Holder tweets. 

But an attorney general on Twitter would not be unheard of -- after all, political figures, including Barack Obama (pre-Inauguration), have joined the site in droves, updating constituents or fans with short posts.   

Missouri Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill -- recently named the No. 2 most influential Twitterer in D.C. (behind Karl Rove) even tweeted from yesterday’s White House fiscal responsibility summit.

ABC News correspondents and The Note have taken to the site, and Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran will be Twittering Obama’s speech to the joint session of Congress tonight, starting at 8:30 p.m. ET. 

And if you thought you’d seen the last of the parachute-pants wearing 1990’s rapper M.C. Hammer, you’d be wrong.  His tweets are apparently music to his nearly 118,000 followers’ ears.  Hammer Time!

Holder will not be in attendance at tonight’s speech; he’s the Cabinet member designated to stay in a secured location away from the U.S. Capitol to preserve the line of succession, if disaster were to strike.

For the attorney general, it could be a good time to think about claiming his own spot in the world of Twitter.

ABC News’ Ariane de Vogue and Jason Ryan contributed to this report.