TheDirty.com publishes timeline saying image was sent to young woman by former Congressman in latter half of 2012
The New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, who is two months into a longshot political comeback, has acknowledged that a previously unseen, self-taken picture of a penis posted to the internet on Tuesday is of him.
The picture, posted on the entertainment site TheDirty.com, was sent to a young woman in the latter half of 2012, according to an accompanying timeline. The timeline could not be independently verified. Weiner responded to the story by saying: "Some things that have been posted today are true and some are not."
The recipient of the picture gave it to The Dirty and described her relationship with Weiner, editor Nik Richie said on the site.
Weiner's campaign was first asked about the picture on Tuesday morning. A statement was released about five hours later, and Weiner has scheduled a press conference for 5pm ET.
"I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have," the statement said. "These things that I did were wrong and hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress."
Weiner resigned from Congress in June 2011, after it emerged that he had exchanged explicit text messages and photos with young women online. In his mayoral campaign, Weiner has apologized for such behavior and said he has undergone therapy. Both he and his wife, Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton, have talked about the difficulty with which they held their marriage together through the scandal.
"This behavior is behind me," Weiner said in his statement on Tuesday. "I've apologized to Huma and am grateful that she has worked through these issues with me and for her forgiveness."
The Dirty account said Weiner and the woman exchanged messages over Facebook and the social networking site Formspring, and that the user alleged to be Weiner also used the nickname "Carlos Danger". The account posted on The Dirty describes phone sex and other details from an interaction said to have lasted until December 2012, just months before Weiner declared his candidacy. It describes contact as recent as April, after the New York Times magazine profiled Weiner and before he announced his candidacy.
A Quinnipiac poll released early last week found Weiner out front in the mayoral race, 25% to 22% over city council speaker Christine Quinn. However a New York Times/Siena College poll released late in the week showed Quinn with a sizable 27-18 lead over Weiner among registered voters in New York.
Weiner's comeback began with a long profile published in the New York Times magazine in April, in which Abedin described her reaction to the discovery of Weiner's original transgressions.
"I felt like I was in an airplane really high in the air, and all of a sudden, the plane is coming apart at the seams, and I am just doing all I can to hang on for dear life," Abedin said. "That is what it felt like."