Shortly after Ghislaine Maxwell& #39;s arrest, rumors emerged on Twitter that Bill Barr had either visited her in jail or tried to but been thwarted by her attorney. The most viral tweets came from @richardmarx, @Baligubadle1, @FordJohnathan5, and @MontyBoa99.

cc: @ZellaQuixote

We downloaded tweets containing "Maxwell", "Barr", and variations on "visit" subsequent to Maxwell& #39;s arrest and removed false positives. Almost all of the traffic (27675 of 28246 tweets, 97.9%) is tweets uncritically spreading the claims or retweets thereof.

A few variations on the "Barr visited Maxwell in jail" narrative have emerged. Three examples:

• Barr tried to visit Maxwell but her lawyer prevented it (this is the original version)
• Barr actually visited Maxwell
• Why isn& #39;t the media covering this?

Here are the first twenty tweets about a supposed attempt by Bill Barr to visit Ghislaine Maxwell in jail. The rumor appears to have started with @Baligubadle1. Thirteen minutes later, @cheecierom joined in by replying with the rumor to a smorgasbord of major accounts.

Early participation in unsubstantiated rumors ain& #39;t the only odd thing about @cheecierom. Based on Yandex reverse image search results, its profile picture appears to be stolen, likely from posts on Russian social media site VKontakte.

One more question about @cheecierom: is it common for health care workers to use the terms "ICU" and "ER" interchangeably to describe their hospital jobs?