Evidence That Hillary’s Staff Knew In 2011 That Anthony Weiner Was Talking Dirty to an Underage Girl — And My Role in Breaking the Story
The Daily Mail reports that Hillary’s staffers knew in 2011 that Anthony Weiner was exchanging inappropriate messages with underage girls. And, as we’ll see, if you were reading a certain blog (a blog we all know and love!) in 2011, you knew it too!
Hillary Clinton’s staffers knew as early as 2011 that Anthony Weiner had been messaging an underage girl, but they did nothing about it, according to WikiLeaks emails published Monday.
John Podesta – now chair of Clinton’s presidential campaign – and Neera Tanden, another adviser, were forwarded news of an investigation into Weiner’s online contact with a 17-year-old Delaware high school student by Jennifer Palmieri, the current campaign communications director, in June 2011.
At the time he was married to Huma Abedin, another member of Clinton’s inner circle, who is now at the center of fresh FBI investigation into the handling of classified material while Clinton was in office.
The email detailed lurid claims of private messages to an underage girl being investigated by police – and was met with the response ‘oof’ by Podesta.
‘Police on Friday afternoon came to the home of a 17-year-old high school junior to ask her about direct online communications she has had with Rep. Anthony Weiner,’ email read, quoting a Fox News article from the same time.
‘Two officers from the New Castle County Police Department arrived at the girl’s home around 4:30 p.m. and asked to speak with the girl’s mother about the daughter’s contact with Weiner. Another officer appeared at the home a short time later.’
Palmieri forwarded the news article to Podesta and Tanden.
This story is of special interest to me — for reasons you’ll learn in the following passage:
Back in April 2011, the then-teenager openly expressed her love for Weiner, who followed her on Twitter.
In her feed, she expressed her love of married men, according to Patterico.com.
At one point she said: ‘HE IS MINE ALL MINE HE LOVES ME AND NO ONE ELSE ILY ILY ILY!!!’ and added ‘@RepWeiner I’m in love with you’ two days later.
If the name “Patterico.com” sounds familiar, it should. That happens to be the blog you are reading right now. And, as it happens, I am the one who broke the story about Weiner’s creepy conversations with the high school girl in Delaware, in this post, which I followed up with this post.
To make a long story short, the girl — whom I termed “Ethel” to protect her real name — had written the following on her Tumblr blog, quoting her “favorite Congressman” as talking about “cape and tights shit”:
“I came back strong. Large. In charge. Tights and cape shit…” My favorite congressman<3
My post published evidence that the girl’s “favorite Congressman” was Weiner . . . and that Weiner had also used the “cape and tights” line in sexually explicit chats with a grown woman in Las Vegas. I was concerned that this evidence indicated that Weiner might have traded sexually explicit messages with the girl as well. After I published my post, Fox News reporter Jana Winter contacted me on the morning of June 9, 2011, saying: “Hi. I’m a reporter with FoxNews.com. Saw your post about Weiner—got a minute to talk?” She had seen the first post I linked above, and I sent her the second link as well.
Based on my posts, Winter was at the girl’s home later that day . . . when the police showed up to search the girl’s computer. Winter’s story went nationwide — and was the story that, we learned today, was sent to Podesta, which caused him to say: “Oof.”
Incidentally, two days later, I published evidence that there was a discrepancy between different news media reports regarding how many messages the girl had exchanged with Weiner. The evidence suggested the possibility that the New York Times, in reporting that there had been only five direct messages exchanged, had simply taken the girl’s word for it . . . and that, perhaps, there had been others.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that, over five years later, all this would become relevant to a presidential election.
[Cross-posted at RedState.]