A tearful Rep. Anthony Weiner admitted Monday that he sent lewd photographs and sexually suggestive messages to at least a half dozen women he's met online over the last several years - including while he was married - but will not resign from office.
"I am deeply regretting what I have done, and I am not resigning," the New York Democrat told reporters in an extraordinary press conference in Manhattan on Monday afternoon. "I am deeply sorry for the pain this has caused Huma, my wife, and my family."
Weiner fessed up that he sent the crotch-shot photo of himself that was accidentally posted on Twitter at the end of May "as part of a joke to a woman in Seattle" and decided to claim he had been hacked after he realized the photo had been made public.
Sticking to the made up hacking story for days was "a hugely regrettable mistake," Weiner said, and he is "so sorry" to have disrupted the Seattle woman's life.
During the emotional press conference, Weiner said he was "embarrassed" that the photo became public and "didn't want it to lead to other embarrassing things," so he chose to "try to tell lies" to the press and public to get out of the situation.
Weiner said he spoke briefly to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) before taking the podium. "She said to be truthful and to say what you know and was thankful that I was doing that today," he said.
The New York Democrat said that he does not believe that he's violated House rules or his oath of office and insisted that he didn't use any government resources to conduct the on-line relationships with various women.
Again and again as he spoke to reporters, Weiner apologized to his wife, an aide to Hillary Clinton, whom he married just under a year ago. Abedin was not in the room as Weiner addressed the media, and the congressman would not say where she was.
Weiner, who insisted he never had sex with or even met any of the women he talked to online, said the couple had every intention of staying together.
"I love my wife very much and we have no intention of splitting up over this," he said, later noting that he had told his wife of some of the online interactions he had with other women before their wedding last summer but only on Monday admitted the whole truth to her. "We have been through a great deal together and we will weather this. I love her very much and she loves me."
"She was very unhappy, she was very disappointed and she told me as much," Weiner added, choking up several times when he mentioned Huma. "She deserves much better than this."
Weiner said he may seek help from a therapist, but has not yet decided whether to do so.
Ahead of Weiner's arrival at the podium, conservative commentator and publisher Andrew Breitbart took the microphone, explaining how he'd come into contact with the woman and taking questions from the New York press corps.
Breitbart wouldn't say whether he wanted Weiner to resign. "I don't have an opinion on that, that's for him to decide and his constituency and the Democratic leadership," he said. And he assailed reporters for questioning the veracity of the information he's provided throughout the scandal. "Everything we've reported about this story has been true," he said.
Weiner's 4 p.m. ET press conference at the Sheraton hotel in midtown Manhattan came after more sexually suggestive photos of Weiner were published on Breitbart's website, Big Government, on Monday. Breitbart says they were provided by a woman who said Weiner sent them to her last month.
Weiner, who made no public appearances over the weekend, was already reeling after a photo of an underwear-clad man was posted on his Twitter account and directed at a Seattle college student. Weiner had previously suggested that his account was hacked.
Among the photos posted Monday on Big Government are four images of Weiner shirtless and flexing his muscles.
A fifth image is the same one of a man in bulging gray underwear that was also sent publicly to the 21-year-old college student, Genette Cordova. All of the photos made public yesterday are said to have come from a Yahoo e-mail address that the woman who provided the photos says Weiner used to communicate with her, according to biggovernment.com.
The photos were allegedly sent nearly two weeks before the underwear photo appeared on Weiner's Twitter feed, and the congressman claimed that his account has been hacked. With all eyes on him last week, Weiner said he could not say "with certitude" that the photo was not of him.
The shirtless photos -- at least one of which was apparently taken in Weiner's office -- are eerily similar to the photograph of former Rep. Christopher Lee (R-N.Y.) flexing his muscles that spread across the web earlier this year and had Lee resigning by the end of the day. Weiner's press secretary did not immediately respond to POLITICO's request for comment.
Early Monday morning, Breitbart wrote that he planned to release "photographs, chats, and emails" throughout the day that would show that Weiner engaged in sexual behavior over the internet. The unidentified woman -- who Breitbart says is not Cordova -- says that Weiner sent them to her as they flirted online. Another photo that the site has chosen not to publish is titled "ready.JPG" and, Breitbart says, is "extremely graphic" and "leaves nothing to the imagination."
The first photo posted on biggovernment.com shows Weiner holding piece of paper that says "me," with an arrow pointed toward his head. The woman claims that it was sent to her via BlackBerry from AnthonyWeiner@aol.com on May 5, after she asked him to confirm that she was really talking to him. The second photo shows him sitting alongside two cats with a sexually suggestive subject line, "Me and the pussys."
In one of the photos released Monday afternoon, a bare-chested man whose nose, mouth and chin appear to be Weiner's is sitting at a desk chair with rows of photographs behind him. One of the photographs in the background, Breitbart says, seems to show Weiner posing with former President Bill Clinton.
The woman who sent the photos to Breitbart has already been interviewed by ABC News, a network official told The New York Times, but had not yet decided when to air the footage. Breitbart told the Times that he was confident in the woman's story.
"She is going to come out of her anonymity in a very short time," he said. "She will be coming forward to communicate the means by which she received these photos. I think it will be clear that she is telling the truth."
Meanwhile, Radar Online reported Monday that it has obtained a cache of 200 sexually explicit messages that Weiner sent to a middle-aged woman in Nevada.
Though Weiner offered to send a photo of his "bulge," he never did because he "got cold feet," the woman said. She claims he did send a raft of suggestive text messages and also said she had a 30-minute phone sex session with him on a congressional phone line.
"A few days later, I tried to call him back on that number," the woman said. "But the number wouldn't connect to his office; instead there was a recorded message that it was an outgoing U.S. Congress line only."
Weiner, 46, is a seven-term Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens. Before being elected to the House in 1998, he spent six years in the New York City Council. He started his career working as an aide to then-Rep. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and has the seat that Schumer held until he was elected to the Senate.
The first lewd photo emerged late on the night of Friday, May 27, and Weiner quickly said he'd been hacked. "The weiner gags never get old, I guess," he told POLITICO the next day.
Weiner hired a lawyer, but chose not to go to the Capitol Police or the FBI. Critics speculated he didn't want to involve the authorities because if he hadn't been hacked, he could be charged with the federal crime of filing a false report.
But, as reporters and bloggers kept their sights on Weiner, his message was muddled. In an interview last Tuesday with CNN, he turned angry and repeatedly refused to answer questions about whether he'd sent the photo and why he'd chosen not to go to authorities.
On Wednesday, with questions mounting, Weiner sat down for a series of interviews. In the first one, with MSNBC, he was asked if the crotch photo were of him. He responded: "You know, I can't say with certitude."
In subsequent interviews, Weiner kept up the same message, stirring suspicions that even if his account was hacked, he might have misbehaved in some way. On "The Rachel Maddow Show," he tried to joke, saying "Am I allowed to say I wish?" when asked if the photo were of him.
On Thursday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) called on Weiner to "come clean" and offer a clear explanation of how a photo of a man in underwear ended up on his Twitter stream.
He cancelled weekend appearances in Wisconsin and New York, choosing instead to spend time with Abedin.
