In response to a report on a gossip Web site, New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner acknowledged Tuesday that he continued to engage in explicit online exchanges after resigning from Congress. “My resignation was not a point in time that was nearly as important to my wife and me as the challenges” in my marriage, Weiner said at a press conference in Manhattan. “Some of these things happened before my resignation, some of them happened after.”
The newly-revealed Facebook messages, posted on gossip site The Dirty, allegedly were sent by Weiner using the alias “Carlos Danger” to a 22-year-old woman between August and November of 2012. According to the site, Weiner also spoke to the woman on the phone and via the social network Formspring, sent her explicit photographs of himself and promised to help her buy a condo in Chicago.
Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, joined him Tuesday and spoke publicly about his behavior for the first time.
“Anthony’s made some horrible mistakes, both before he resigned from Congress and after, but I do truly believe that that is between us and our marriage,” she said. “I love him, I have forgiven him, I believe him, and as we have said from the beginning, we are moving forward.”
Not everything published Tuesday is accurate, Weiner said in a statement earlier in the day, but some of it is.
Weiner resigned from Congress over sexual online exchanges in the summer of 2011. At his press conference, he did not directly comment on the timing of these messages, saying he did not want to get into a “back-and-forth” every time new revelations appear. If the allegations are true, the conversations with this woman began shortly after Weiner and Abedin gave a joint interview to People magazine, talking about their marriage and 6-month-old son.
As for those who argue he should end his bid for mayor in light of this news, Weiner said only, “I’m sure many of my opponents would like me to drop out of the race.”
Weiner has tried to avoid questions about his past in his campaign for mayor of New York. But he said early on in his bid that women could come forward with more e-mails or photos. “Perhaps I’m surprised more things didn’t come out sooner,” he said.
While he’s risen quickly in some polls and most Democrats think he deserves a second chance, a large chunk of the electorate continues to view him unfavorably.
“I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have,” Weiner’s statement reads. “As I have said in the past, 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. While some things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is no question that what I did was wrong. This behavior is behind me. I’ve apologized to Huma and am grateful that she has worked through these issues with me and for her forgiveness. I want to again say that I am very sorry to anyone who was on the receiving end of these messages and the disruption that this has caused. As my wife and I have said, we are focused on moving forward.”