Anthony Weiner Dodges Question About Whether He’s Still Sexting
Published at
Alex Wong/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — In an interview unlikely to lay to rest concerns that his online titillations are behind him, Anthony Weiner evaded a question Monday night about whether he is still sexting women.
In a Q&A session with the New York Daily News’ Denis Hamill, Weiner notably didn’t give a yes or no answer to a direct question about whether he is still sending lewd messages to women online.
“You can quibble about beginnings, middles and ends but what we’re talking about is over a year ago,” Weiner said.
Weiner, 48, added that he doesn’t know whether there will be another shoe to drop in this saga.
“I have no idea. These are people who I thought were friends, people I trusted when I communicated with them,” he told Hamill. “But who knows what they might do now. But none of it is new. It’s all old stuff.”
Weiner did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment.
The former congressman-turned mayoral candidate has fallen sharply in the polls since new revelations emerged that he sent sex messages to women online after leaving Congress in 2011.
He has defiantly said he will stay in the New York City mayoral race despite calls from Democrats to drop out.
The Daily News also reported on Sunday that Weiner hired a private investigator and paid $45,000 to investigate a lie: that the lewd messages he sent from his Twitter account were sent by a hacker.
Asked about the report, Weiner gave another answer that is bound to raise eyebrows.
After initially insisting that the report was “wrong,” Weiner acknowledged moments later that “85 percent” of the payments came after he left Congress.
“After I’d left Congress,” he said. “After I had admitted I had sent the texts. We needed to hire lawyers. We needed to hire other professionals to gather up information. Remember, the House speaker had initiated an Ethics Committee investigation. We needed to secure all our hard drives and everything else.”
Weiner said the lawyers were responsible for hiring the private investigator.
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio