Former Congressman and Convicted Sex Offender Anthony Weiner Eyes Political Comeback

Is the disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner plotting a political comeback?Weiner, who hasn’t held a position in public office since he resigned from Congress in 2011 over a sexting scandal involving several women and a minor, says he is considering entering the New York City Council race in lower Manhattan to unseat the current councilmember, Carlina Rivera.“I’m thinking about it. I’m wrestling with it,” Weiner told the listeners of his 77WABC radio show on Saturday afternoon. He later added that “I love doing this job on the radio, but I want to be of service.”Returning to politics will likely be a challenge for Weiner, whose political career has been hampered by several high-profile scandals relating to him sending lewd images to women online.His fall from grace began over a decade ago when he accidentally posted a suggestive photo of himself to his page on Twitter in 2011. Though he initially insisted that he was the subject of a hack, after a surge of media attention, he later admitted that he was in fact the man in the image and that he had been sending lewd photos to women who were not his wife, Huma Abedin, at the time.After additional salacious images and messages sent by the ex-Congressman surfaced online, he eventually resigned from his post in June 2011. He and his wife, who, at the time was the deputy chief of staff to the secretary of state at the time, Hillary Clinton, later announced that they were expecting their first child together.Weiner stayed out of the spotlight for two years before launching an unsuccessful campaign for New York mayor in 2013. Though he posted surprisingly strong polling results at the beginning of the race, his campaign was derailed when reports surfaced that he was still sending inappropriate images to women online. Despite protests from his party, he stayed in the Democratic primary, finishing fifth.In 2017, Weiner pleaded guilty to sexting a 15-year-old girl and was handed a 21-month sentence. When federal officials were conducting a search of Weiner’s laptop, they discovered emails from Ms. Abedin that reignited an FBI probe into then-presidential candidate, Mrs. Clinton, eleven days before the election. It was later disclosed that Ms. Abedin had filed for divorce from Weiner after seven years of marriage.During Saturday’s interview, Weiner — who was required to register as a sex offender after he left prison — acknowledged that his rap sheet of controversies might pose a challenge to a potential political comeback.“The things in my past, the things about my addiction, the things about my acting out, the things about my background — it’s a lot, it’s a lot,” he said. “But we’re at a moment that we Democrats, we seem like we come into knife fights carrying library books all the time.”

Former Congressman and Convicted Sex Offender Anthony Weiner Eyes Political Comeback

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