Julian Assange’s Twitter account briefly disappears

The handle, @JulianAssange, went down late Sunday evening, before the start of Christmas. A search pulled up only “does not exist” page.

It is unclear whether the account was deleted or taken down by Twitter. Assange tweeted to his 600,000-plus followers as recently as Friday, according to an archive, suggesting the account was deleted.

A request for comment from Twitter was not immediately returned.

By late morning Monday, Assange’s account was back online. While he didn’t offer any explanation for what happened, Assange sent out a tweet with a cartoon depicting Santa Claus using WikiLeaks to help write his naughty/nice list. His follower count had dropped to less than 5,000 followers upon the account’s return, but has dramatically risen to 388,000 since. A spokeswoman for the company pointed out that Twitter’s guidance on reactivating an account says “account data (such as Tweets, followers, favorites, etc.) may take a few minutes to fully restore.”

Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, the website that published stolen emails it claimed were from Democratic officials during the 2016 campaign, including that of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. He has lived in asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012.

WikiLeaks had been back in the news in the U.S. in November as the investigations in Russian interference in the 2016 election found messages showing Donald Trump Jr., President Trump’s oldest child, had been in contact with WikiLeaks.

Several people on Twitter commented on Assange’s Twitter disappearance, some suggesting a conspiracy, while others celebrated it as a Christmas present.