>>>4113715 (pb)

I thought it might be useful to see if there are references to Comey's dog Benji from before the Nov 14 tweet under analysis. If this is a true story, I would expect to find prior references to the family dog.

I did find one reference from a New York Times book review "James B. Comey: By the Book" dated April 12, 2018.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/books/review/james-b-comey-by-the-book.html

Question: If somebody walked into your office while you were writing, what would they see?

Answer: I’m in an armchair with the laptop on my actual lap but atop one of those “read-in-bed” boards to make a better angle for typing. Our loyal, and old, rescue-dog, Benji, is asleep somewhere near my chair. I’m listening to classical music.

I did not find any other references, which surprised me, I would think a family dog would be mentioned from time to time. However, even this one reference from April suggests that Comey's tweet was not invented out of thin air. This makes the tweet more likely to be genuine. And even if the tweet encodes a message, it seems to argue against the name being a codephrase created on the spot to refer to GHWB (some have noted that Benji is phonetically GB backwards.)