Huma Abedin separates from Anthony Weiner after latest sexting scandal
Huma Abedin, a top aide and longtime confidante of Hillary Clinton, announced that she is separating from husband Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) on Monday after a new sexting controversy ensnared the controversial former lawmaker.
“After long and painful consideration and work on my marriage, I have made the decision to separate from my husband,” Abedin, said in a statement.
“Anthony and I remain devoted to doing what is best for our son, who is the light of our life. During this difficult time, I ask for respect for our privacy.”
Abedin’s statement follows a report Sunday about Weiner sending a woman a photo of his crotch with his toddler son in the background.
Weiner, whose career ended after a sexting scandal in 2011, was reportedly exchanging messages with a woman on July 31, 2015, when he changed the subject of the explicit conversation, saying, “Someone just climbed into my bed,” according to the New York Post.
He attached a picture of his crotch, with his son curled up nearby in a blanket.
“You do realize you can see you[r] Weiner in that pic??” the woman responded, according to the Post.
Weiner apparently deleted his Twitter on Monday after the report surfaced.
It’s far from the first time Weiner has embarrassed those around him through the use of his Twitter account.
Weiner resigned from Congress in 2011 after sending a sexually explicit photo of himself to another woman. The congressman had meant to send the message privates.
He initially denied he was pictured in the tweet, before admitting at a New York press conference that he had sent sexually explicit messages.
When he resigned, he issued a public apology and said he would change his behavior.
Abedin stuck with Weiner after the episode, and the former congressman launched a bid to be New York’s mayor in 2013.
He was then hit with another sexting scandal that revealed he had continued to send explicit messages after the initial controversy had become public.
In 2016, a documentary called “Weiner” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The documentary followed Abedin and Weiner and focused on Weiner’s 2013 mayoral run and showed the effect it had on Abedin.
Abedin spoke about the difficulties in an interview on the Call Your Girlfriend podcast earlier this year.
She said that marriage “really only works in any situation, whether you’re in politics or not, if one partner is fully supportive of the other.”
“I think it’s a little – it’s often a little more challenging when you’re in politics because your private life, and I think everybody craves their own privacy, and so I think your private life is displayed to the world in a way that you otherwise wouldn’t have to deal with if one spouse is a private person and the other person’s in politics as was the case certainly in my marriage,” Abedin said.
“But I think it works if you fully support each other.”
During the podcast, she mentioned she is on out on the campaign trail a lot of the time and her husband helps to care for her son.
“I have a four-year-old son and I don’t think I could do this if I didn’t have the support of a spouse who is willing to basically be a stay-at- home dad as much as he possibly can so I’m able to be on the road,” Abedin said.
“I miss my son but I don’t worry about him because I know between this little village we’ve created between Anthony and my in-laws and my mom and our families and this wonderful woman who we have helping us I can go out and be the best professional woman that I can be because I have that support.”
In a July interview with The New York Times, Weiner said he wasn’t “going to go down the path of talking about any of that,” when asked if he was still engaging in activities that got him in trouble.
“But I will say this: There’s no doubt that the Trump phenomenon has led a lot of people to say to me, ‘Boy, compared to inviting the Russians to come hack someone’s email, your thing seems almost quaint.’”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in a statement Monday commended Abedin for her decision to separate from her husband.
“Huma is making a very wise decision. I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him,” he said.
“I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information,” he continued. “Who knows what he learned and who he told? It’s just another example of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment. It is possible that our country and its security have been greatly compromised by this.”
Trump earlier this month called Weiner a “pervert sleaze.”
Weiner’s latest scandal may hurt more than his marriage.
The New York Daily News will also no longer carry opinion columns written by Weiner, the newspaper’s opinion editor, Josh Greenberg, told The Daily Beast.
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