It really was only a matter of time before more pictures of New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner’s you-know-what came out.
On Tuesday, a site called TheDirty.com published quotes from an anonymous female source who said that she and the married former U.S. Congressman exchanged tawdry pictures after he resigned from Congress for the same transgression. (Yes, those new pictures are published on the site too.)
This time around, Weiner used the screenname “Dangr33” and the pseudonym Carlos Danger, promising the 22-year-old woman a condo in Chicago and a place on a Politico bloggers’ panel.
Weiner later reiterated that sentiment during a press conference in Manhattan Tuesday afternoon, insisting that he was still 100 percent committed to staying in the race.
“My resignation was not a point in time that nearly as important to my wife and me as the challenges” in our marriage, he said. “Some of these things happened before my resignation, some of them happened after.”
In a surprising move, Huma Abedin followed her husband with a statement of her own.
“I love him. I have forgiven him. I believe in him and, as we have said from the beginning, we are moving forward,” Abedin, a longtime staffer for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said. “It was not an easy choice in any way, but I made the decision that it was worth staying in this marriage…for me, my son and our family.”
Weiner’s first political career was derailed back in June 2011 when the then-Congressman had to admit to sharing photos of his genitals to women he met on the internet. He was exposed by sending what he thought was a direct message on Twitter as, instead, a public tweet.
He’s been trying to poke back into politics since, announcing in May that he would be running for New York City mayor. Recent polls have Weiner in first or second place, battling City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the favorite before Weiner’s entry into the race.
The new revelations could obviously taint Weiner’s mayoral bid, especially if what TheDirty.com’s source is saying is true, that Weiner was engaging in this behavior after the original Weinergate. That being said, Weiner told reporters earlier this year that they had been warned. “If reporters want to go try to find more, I can’t say they aren’t going to find another picture,” he noted.
This piece has been updated.
