Anthony Weiner Scandal Evaporates Lead in Polls; 'Carlos Danger' Asked Girl to Delete Evidence
Weiner Promised Sydney Leathers a 'Job at Politico' to 'Hard Delete' Sex Messages
Anthony Weiner's text sex scandal damaged his numbers in the polls significantly, with the New York City mayoral candidate dropping 10 points almost overnight. He also tried to cover up evidence of his continued electronic and phone liaisons, student Sydney Leathers alleged.
Anthony Weiner revealed that his text sex scandal went on for much longer than his resignation from Congress in June of 2011. After the scandalous Twitter posts, sexts and phone calls were revealed on Tuesday by TheDirty.com, Weiner confirmed in a press conference Wednesday that he continued his lecherous behavior with various women up until August of 2012 using the alias "Carlos Danger."
The revelation has crushed the 48-year-old politician in the polls. Although he was leading with 26 percent in a Quinnipiac University poll on Tuesday, a new Wall Street Journal-NBC 4 New York-Marist poll showed his support shrank overnight to 16 percent Wednesday. As a result, Quinn is now the frontrunner with 25 percent, Bill de Blasio and Bill Thompson have 14 percent, and John Liu has 7 percent.
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Weiner pegged the total number of all the women he's texted, tweeted, cybersexed with, and had phone sex with at 13, with three of them being after his resignation from Congress.
"I said there were multiple women over an extended period of time," he told The New York Post. "It's not dozens and dozens. … It's behind me. It's a year ago at least. And I worked through those things."
One woman linked to Weiner in the sex chats, 22-year-old political science student Sydney Leathers, claimed that their lewd conversations ended in November of last year, and that the mayoral candidate contacted her four months ago asking her not to come forward.
"Anthony Weiner like a true sex predator promised [Leathers] many things like a job at Politico and a condo in Chicago (a place they could meet up and have sex)," TheDirty.com wrote, with the former congressman asking her to do him a "solid" and "hard delete" all electronic correspondence.
"Obviously I knew that he wanted me to erase any evidence of our conversations, because that was around the time I knew that he was going to run for mayor," Leathers told "Inside Edition."
Despite the particularly damning evidence— TheDirty.com allegedly has nude pictures of Weiner— his wife, top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, has forgiven him and defended him publicly. Weiner has also resisted calls for critics and NYC publications to drop out of the race.
"Now citizens have to decide whether this personal behavior — when one thing happened or it didn't happen — is important to them," Weiner explained. "Did you think I did not know when I got into this race that there wasn't a possibility that something like this would happen?"
