538

For the GOP Weiner has been the gift that keeps on giving. It’s a shame because Weiner had some real natural political gifts. But the GOP is a party of sociopaths and once they spot a weakness they keep on hitting it. Weiner apparently suffers some sort of compulsion with the sexting and all that. I know, I’ve already broken a American convention in saying something halfway sympathetic of this most demonized social pariah of a man.

But I am not at all convinced that he’s evil. Donald Trump is evil and many of his friends in the GOP are evil but Weiner isn’t evil-he’s just very weak. And the evil love to prey on weakness.

It’s interesting to note the varied status of Trump and Weiner. Even before the conviction for sexting with a minor he’s been considered this utterly depraved disgusting man, just squalid. But at least until the accusations of sexting a minor he’d never been accused of sexting anyone under age before. That being the case where was the crime? Well there was no crime but clearly the voters in his pretty conservative Jewish NYC district saw it as irredeemably squalid and repulsive.

Many of the same people who see Weiner as this vile deviant call Trump ‘Mr. President’ and see him as someone we should have reverence for. Indeed almost everyone calls him ‘Mr. President’ even those who want to impeach him. I’m a rare breed that doesn’t ever refer to this illegitimate ‘President’ this illegitimate ‘man’ as ‘Mr. President’ or ‘the President’ though I digress…

Yet what is sending a few squalid pics on Twitter compared to what Trump’s been accused of? As Masha Gessen has argued Americans have a very strange moral economy. Maybe on some level a lot of people see someone like Trump who is literally slapping underage girls on the bum and walking in on them when they’re naked as less squalid than a sad sack like Weiner sending out dick pics alone in front of the screen in his room somehwere? Because maybe on some level Trump’s actions are seen as those of a real man whereas there’s nothing manly about Weiner on his phone feverishly sending out texts?

Again this is sad in a way because Weiner has some real political talent. He used to have some great speeches in the House that would light up the GOP-which is why they hated him.

Here was a great confrontation he had with a racist Orthodox Jew at a local deli who attacked Huma Abedin because she’s an Arab. 

But his genius was always combined with some real demons that he never could control. After Breitbart took him down over the dick picks on Twitter-that he sent to consenting women of age-he had a shot at redemption in 2013. It really looked as if he could be NYC’s next mayor. I don’t live in NYC but if there was a way this Long Islander could have voted for him I certainly would have.

Then Sydney Leathers happened. 

Listening to her side of the story back in 2013 is rather rich:

Sydney Leathers on Anthony Weiner: ‘He had me wrapped around his finger because he knew I had him on a pedestal’

This doesn’t even pass the laugh test-that he had her wrapped around his finger is a lie as is the claim that she held him on a pedestal. Weiner doesn’t have nearly enough self control to control another human being.

“Instead of rock stars or actors, Leathers is into politicians, and she recalls first spotting Weiner on cable television. “He’d give these hyperbolic speeches on the House floor,” she said. “I was so impressed by them. He was so passionate, and it made me feel we cared about the same things.” When Weiner resigned in 2011, she sent him a Facebook message to express her disappointment in his behavior.

And that was that — until he wrote back in the summer of 2012 to apologize for letting her down. The two quickly began an “emotional” affair — she liked his intellect, his charm, their banter and chemistry. “He had me wrapped around his finger because he knew I had him on a pedestal,” she said. “Honestly, I was flattered to get attention from him.”

At first, they wrote or talked every day — soon with risque texts, explicit photos and phone sex. “I’ve never met anyone with an ego like that. It was all about him.” The relationship was their hot, guilty secret, though the two never met in person, but it was over by the end of last year.

Then, in April, Weiner called to get her reaction to a flattering New York Times profile of himself and his wife, Huma Abedin. Leathers said that it was fine, but the next day, Weiner e-mailed to say that his brother wanted to know whether she was upset. That scared her, because she was unaware that his brother even knew about the affair. “The whole situation,” she said, “freaked me out.

She said that she finally decided to expose Weiner’s hypocrisy as the mayoral campaign heated up. “I was proof he hadn’t changed. I felt voters deserved the truth.” She intended to release the information anonymously: No rival mayoral campaign approached her and she said she wasn’t looking for money, or she “would have sold the photos and the text transcripts.” She insists that she never asked for or received a dime from Weiner.

Great novel of the young ingenue in love. Here’s the reality. Ms. Leathers herself boasts of being expert in the art of entrapping politicians. 

“Sydney Leathers, the second of Anthony Weiner’s two sexting partners, and a porn actress, who contributed pieces to Washington Babylon, the blog of Ken Silverstein, a liberal journalist long critical of the Clintons. Leathers has presented herself as an expert in the art of entrapping politicians.”

Ok, so fast forward to 2016. Weiner’s wife has an important role with Hillary’s campaign. Weiner himself does a movie and is interviewed by Chris Hayes in early August, 2016. But then Sydney Leathers happens again. 

She denied him his first chance at redemption and is evidently determined to deny him his second shot.

“Leathers — the woman at the center of his sexting scandal in 2013 — penned a scathing review for the documentary about his failed bid for New York City mayor. In the review, Leathers predicts his “behavior will continue.”

“In fact, I am certain his behavior continues to this day because a woman who claims to be one of his current sexting partners has reached out to me for advice,” Leathers said. “She was thinking about talking to press. I said, ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ which would surprise people … but it was like, ‘Look what happened to me. It will impact future employment, relationships with friends and families.’”

Again, the idea that she’s doing this because she was a victim of Weiner’s is hard to credit when you consider what she’s said about entrapping politicians and that Charles Johnson says he paid her in to get info on Weiner during the 2016 campaign.

Again coincidences take a lot of planning-and these machinations by Johnson and Leathers was part of that planning for the ‘lucky coincidence’ of Weinergate-which would end up taking down the first major party Presidential nominee.

“Charles C. Johnson [not to be confused with Charles Johnson the blogger behind the blog Little Green Footballs] reaches out first to online seductress Sydney Leathers and then conservative journalist Alana Goodman to form an alliance that, while mutually beneficial, would be most rewarding for Donald Trump. A reprised “Weinergate,” Johnson mused, while ostensibly focused on Abedin’s and Weiner’s troubled union, would lead inexorably to the real target.

“The public at large would think failed marriage, and they’d think Hillary and Bill,” he told WhoWhatWhy.

Engaging with Leathers made sense, he said referring to the fact that she claimed to know “all these women” who had been in contact with Weiner online.“I had a friend of mine who reached out to her and we said ‘if you hear anything else, here’s the money, flip us the information, and there’ll be more money later,’” Johnson said, explaining that besides relying on crowdfunding, he has considerable personal wealth.

On just how much exactly he paid Leathers to come up with the right victims, Johnson draws a blank. “I don’t know how much we gave her, I can’t remember,” he said, adding, “We did a lot of research, all the Hillary ties, making sure it got to the right journalists. If a journalist was doing really good work against [Hillary] they’d get an email with more research. So it was a lot of fun.”

I don’t know how much I gave her. Well one things clear-the FEC will be interested. Just ask Michael Cohen. The fact that he’s drawing a blank might mean it’s  a pretty high number and if so he may well have a Michael Cohen problem on his hands-going over limits on in kind contributions to campaigns. Another question is wether or not anyone in the campaign was aware of the considerable personal wealth he was spending on catfishing Weiner.

While standard operating procedure from the Trump campaign is to claim everyone was a coffee boy, a volunteer, worked there one day, and Trump doesn’t know them, it’s clear that Johnson is a pretty good friend of Trump’s-he was at the election ‘victory’ party.

Johnson is spotted in the VIP section of Trump’s victory party at New York’s Hilton Hotel.

“While Johnson would not divulge to WhoWhatWhy who invited him to the notoriously exclusive celebration, he spoke freely about his influence with Trump’s braintrust. He described a process of vetting, suggesting, and introducing candidates to the incoming administration through his highly placed friends. He estimates “about a hundred” of his picks got jobs with the new administration, with more still being added.”

Really-100? You think that’s one thing that the future Democratic Congress might want to look into when they open Select Committee investigation into Comeygate? Even if Johnson’s number is inflated by a factor of 10 that would mean there are 10 of his people in the Trump Russia House. We certainly want an accounting of each and every one as well as figuring out exactly what Johnson really did for the campaign-how large was his role, who with the campaign he dealt with, etc.

FN: Nadler had said they would investigate, though In retrospect it’s not clear the House as any immediate plans to investigate Comeygate-they do have their hands busy with the impeachment inquiry in Ukraine if you’re listening-I personally agree with the school of thought that the Dems don’t want just one or two articles of impeachment but the more the merrier-after all it gives the GOP Senators more bites of the apple.

I also agree entirely with the school that argues the imeachment inquiry ought to end not late in 2019 but in late 2020-the record in this book shows I’ve argued since before the fake ‘President’s’ fake inauguration that the Dems ought to impeach him 11 days before the 2020 election a la the Comey letter. If the Dems do end up doing that perhaps Nadler and Friends will get the time to also investigate Comeygate-besides Russian Collusion and Ukrainian Extortion you have Rogue anti Clinton pro Trump FBI Agent Collusion to look into.

End of FN

Again, I stand by my thesis: Weiner is not evil he’s just (very) weak.

The Post splashes news of still another Weiner sexting scandal across its front page, under the headline “Pop Goes the Weiner.” The latest unnamed object of Weiner’s cyber-desire, a 40-something divorcee, was described as “a self avowed supporter of Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association who’s used Twitter to bash both President Obama and Clinton.”

I mean by 2016 he should have realized that the only women sexting him are GOP honeypots. Maybe he did but couldn’t stop himself anyway.  On August 13 this incident occurred:

“The pro-Trump New York Post reports that an anonymous Republican student at an unnamed “NYC area college” using a female friend’s Twitter account “catfished” Weiner into sending him flirtatious direct messages. While the tone of the piece is mostly comical, given later circumstances one sentence rings ominously, “It’s the third time Weiner has been caught sexting.”

Appearing on a Miami radio show a week later, Weiner calls the “catfish” item a setup. “Look, I am a target of a local newspaper here in New York.” he says, clearly referring to the Post.“They got someone to get into a conversation with me online. I caught them at it, but they still had enough things to make a story out of it.”

Coincidences take a lot of planning. In the next chapter we will continue to watch the planning of the great coincidence-the Comey letter-that rigged the election for the candidate Comey knew full well was being investigated for colluding with Russia to win the election.

Sydney Leathers and Chuck Johnson were one track. But there were other tracks. In the next few chapters we will examine them.

 

 

 

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