Congressman Weiner and the arrogance of power

When confronted with the now-infamous crotch photo, Congressman Anthony Wiener said that he could not declare with “certitude” that it was his crotch that was tweeted. Of course, we all now know now that Weiner knew with “certitude” that it was in fact him and that he had taken the picture. But he declared loudly that he was the victim of some hacker.

It became clear rather quickly that “certitude” was nothing more than an untruth, and the tale of the “hacker” was a pathetic attempt to avoid the truth. Pathetic in that if there really had been a hacker, the first thing Weiner would have done was report it to the authorities. The reason he didn’t has now become obvious: There was no hacker.

A false report to the police would have been a crime, and so when he refused to report the “crime,” most people, including my good friend Ed Koch, came to the inescapable conclusion that Weiner was the real culprit.

For him to go through this charade in an attempt to deceive the public is inexcusable. Even when he finally came forward and admitted to his Twitter messages, he continued to be a stranger to the truth. Weiner said he did not attempt to prevent any of the women he tweeted from covering up the communication or coach them on what to say when the press made inquiries. The truth of the matter is that adult film actress Ginger Lee released excerpts of tweets she and Weiner exchanged that clearly demonstrated that even during his tearful press conference, he continued to lie.

While he admitted that “this was me doing a dumb thing and doing it repeatedly and then lying about it and that’s all there is,” he was in fact attempting to conceal his cover-up. The excerpts Lee made public clearly show that notwithstanding Weiner’s claims at his press conference that he had made no attempt to keep his female Twitter correspondents from being honest with the press, he urged Ginger Lee to lie. Weiner texted her, “Do you need to talk to a professional PR type person to give you advice? I can have someone on my team call. (Yea my team is doing great. Ugh.)”