The official Twitter account of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange disappeared Sunday. A so-called "alternative Assange account" later claimed that Twitter had stubbed the official Assange account ahead of a "blockbuster story" he was prepping with WikiLeaks, according to CBS News. That account, however, has no confirmed affiliation with Assange or WikiLeaks and has since been suspended.
The account, which did not appear to have been suspended by Twitter, had not tweeted since this past Friday. The official WikiLeaks account was not affected. Twitter did not immediately respond to Complex's request for comment.
As of Monday morning, the @JulianAssange handle had returned, though it was not immediately clear whether it was being operated by Assange.
The handle also returned (at the time of this writing) with a noticeably smaller (under 6,000) amount of followers than were displayed just days ago (609,000). As others have noted, the handle's post-disappearance behavior also marks a departure from the original Assange account, including the fact that it now follows 24 users.
Back in November, the Guardian reported that U.K.-based data analysis company Cambridge Analytica had contacted Assange to request WikiLeaks share hacked emails related to Hillary Clinton "at about the time" they started working for the Trump campaign in summer 2016. "We received a message back from them that he didn't want to and wasn't able to, and that was the end of the story," Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Lix said.
That same month, the Atlantic revealed that the official WikiLeaks Twitter account and Donald Trump Jr. had exchanged DMs.
