'C'est moi': Mitt Romney has been tweeting under the secret account, Pierre Delecto, reports say

You may know him as Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee with a fastidious approach to blowing out birthday candles, but according to news media reports, the mild-mannered Mormon also has an alter-ego who likes to live (slightly more) dangerously on social media.

Mitt Romney, you see, is also the mysterious Twitter user Pierre Delecto. And Pierre Delecto is Mitt Romney.

"C'est moi," Romney confessed in French when confronted about the secret online identity by Atlantic reporter McKay Coppins on Sunday.

Earlier that day, Coppins published a profile on Romney in which the senator shared the existence of the profile he uses to follow the political discussion on Twitter.

"What do they call me, a lurker?" Romney said.

Though he did not divulge the name of the Twitter handle, he let slip that he followed 688 people.

Slate reporter Ashley Feinberg then used that limited data to infer that the Pierre Delecto account was, in fact, Romney.

The account has since been made private, but according to screenshots of his posts taken by reporters, Romney appears to have primarily used the Twitter profile to anonymously defend himself from posts or comments on the social media platform that he felt were unfair.

For example, when Soledad O'Brien shared a story from The Hill about Romney's questioning whether he would endorse Trump in 2020, O'Brien wrote, "Utter lack of a moral compass."

"Only Republican to hit Trump on Mueller report, only one to hit Trump on character time and again, so Soledad, you think he's the one without the moral compass?" tweeted Delecto in response.

Brit Hume, from Fox News, shared a Daily Caller story about Romney's statement that President Donald Trump's withdrawal from Syria made the U.S. an "unreliable ally," along with the comment, "Some might say Romney is too."

"Loyal to principle trumps loyalty to party or person, right Brit?" Delecto replied.

When conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin tweeted that Romney's way of dealing with Trump was "nonconfrontation verging on spinelessness," Delecto replied, "Jennifer, you need to take a breath. Maybe you can then acknowledge the people who agree with you in large measure even if not in every measure."

And when one Twitter user said, "Congrats GOP Senate. Well done," regarding the fallout from Trump's Syria withdrawal, Romney tweeted in his Delecto guise, "John, agree on Trump's awful decision, but what could the Senate do to stop it?"

Slate also shared some of the posts liked by Romney via the Delecto account. Many of them were posts that were positive about himself.

For example, he liked one post from Washington Post reporter Matt Viser, in which Viser asked, "Who is having the better Saturday?" with a photo of Romney at a pumpkin patch with his family beside a Trump Twitter rant in which he called Romney "pompous."

He also liked a post from USA TODAY opinion contributor Christian Schneider that shot down Trump's claim that Utah voters were regretting their support for Romney.

"The people of Utah were so disgusted by Romney's criticisms of Trump they elected him to the Senate in 2018 by a 62%-30% margin," Schneider wrote, to Delecto's delight.

Using the Delecto cover, Romney also liked a number of tweets that were critical of Trump, such as posts from conservative lawyer and fierce Trump critic George Conway, the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. Slate said Conway "appears to be a particular favorite" of Delecto's, including tweets questioning Trump's fitness for office.

He also liked a tweet from political analyst Jeff Greenfield, who said he was "reassessing" his position on using the 25th Amendment to declare the president unfit for office.

And he was one of more than 19,000 people who liked a tweet from the infamous Devin Nunes' Cow account that slammed former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for hypocrisy in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Romney's office did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment on the Pierre Delecto account.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Mitt Romney is Pierre Delecto: Reports reveal secret Twitter handle