Can Forensic Linguistics Pin Down the Author of a Trump Tweet?
On Saturday, a single tweet from Donald Trump—or at least one from the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account—seemed to turn everyone into an amateur forensic linguist, sifting for textual clues. Forty words (and an exclamation point) were enough to set off a frenzy of analysis: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!”
Trump’s personal lawyer, John Dowd, took the hit for a message that, some legal analysts , provided evidence that the president had obstructed justice. Dowd told , , and that he wrote those 40 ill-advised words. A corroborating source described the phrasing to ABC News as “sloppy.” The implication that Trump knew
