Is GOP House campaign manager source of storm hoax on Twitter?

Eric Pfeiffer
·Reporter

As Hurricane Sandy made landfall on Monday, the Twitter account "@ComfortablySmug" began issuing a series of false tweets about alleged incidents happening across New York City.

BuzzFeed has done some digging and claims that the proprietor of the ComfortablySmug account is 29-year-old Shashank Tripathi, a hedge fund analyst and campaign manager for Christopher R. Wight, the Republican candidate in New York's 12th congressional district.

The false claims made on the Twitter feed, which has more than 6,000 followers, include assertions that the New York Stock Exchange was flooding, that Gov. Andrew Cuomo was trapped in Manhattan and that all power in Manhattan was being shut off by Con Edison.

From BuzzFeed contributor Jack Stuef:

"When I called Tripathi and introduced myself, he immediately hung up. @comfortablysmug did not respond to a DM request for comment. Wight could not immediately be reached for comment. Jordan Terry, founder of hedge fund consultancy Stone Street Partners, whose blog @comfortablysmug links to in his Twitter profile, said 'Smug' no longer writes for the blog, but Terry had 'otherwise no comment' on Tripathi."

Here is a censored image of Tripathi that Stuef says matches the online profile for ComfrotablySmug's account.

The account has been inactive for nearly 24 hours. The full BuzzFeed report has more details on Tripathi and his alleged connection to the Twitter account in question.