📉 Weinergate: The Almost Totally Unknown Story of How the Girl in Weiner’s Sexting Case Lied to Hurt Hillary Clinton

🔮 Trump’s Prophetic Tweet: 2015

Then came Trump’s eerily accurate prediction. Less than a month after declaring his candidacy, he tweeted:

“It came out that Huma Abedin knows all about Hillary’s private illegal emails. Huma’s PR husband, Anthony Weiner, will tell the world.”

It was August 2015. Weiner had just started a brief stint at a PR firm. Trump’s tweet wasn’t just a jab—it was a forecast. He knew Weiner’s weakness. He knew the GOP’s playbook. And he knew that if Weiner could be baited again, it could take down Clinton.

Just call him Donald Nostradamus Trump. For all his baseless boasts, Trump hasn’t gotten the credit he deserves for predicting Weinergate more than a year before it happened. In early August 2015, he tweeted about Weiner being a liability to Clinton—and on October 28, 2016, that liability helped win him the presidency.

How’s that for “Weiner telling the world”?

Strangely, this is the one thing Trump hasn’t taken credit for—despite it being one of the few times he actually deserves it.

“That August 3 tweet was just one in a string. His assertions essentially anticipated that an attack was coming, if not when and how. He also regularly referred to Weiner as a degenerate and liability to Clinton.”

“All that was missing was a girl to lure Weiner into another “sexting” transgression. Then the trap could be sprung and the computer contents publicized.”

All that was missing was the girl. But this part of the Great Coincidence was also being planned down in North Carolina by a young woman whose Right wing father had raised her to aspire to be the next Monica Lewinsky. 

On November 6, 2017  whowhatwhy, the independent investigative news outlet. published this very important article:

“Today, Anthony Weiner enters a federal prison hospital in Massachusetts to begin serving a 21-month sentence for his online relationship with an underage girl. He’ll be in an intensive counseling and treatment program.”

“On its face, the final act of Weiner’s protracted and ugly fall seems straightforward — a sordid tale of a self-destructive middle-aged politician’s exploitative cyber-relationship with a minor. And, make no mistake, that is much of the story.”

“But close scrutiny reveals far more to it than meets the eye.”

Most Americans stopped at the tabloid headline: Weiner is a revolting pedophile. End of story. But that’s precisely why he’s been the gift that keeps on giving for the GOP. The deeper truth is buried beneath layers of political manipulation.

🧠 The Trap Was Already Set

“All that was missing was a girl to lure Weiner into another ‘sexting’ transgression. Then the trap could be sprung and the computer contents publicized.”

That girl was already being groomed as WhoWhatWhy documented—by her father and by political operatives. Down in North Carolina, a teenager raised by a right-wing father reportedly aspired to be “the next Monica Lewinsky.” And she wasn’t alone.

🕵️‍♀️ The Girl, the Father, and the Plan

“Our investigation turned up a fascinating cast of characters… beginning with a teenage girl in North Carolina sending fan messages to Congressman Weiner, and ending in one of the biggest electoral upsets in American history.”

The girl’s actions were shaped by adults—her father and a Trump surrogate. She told at least two people she wanted to be “the next Monica Lewinsky.” The goal wasn’t just to entrap Weiner—it was to derail Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Even WhoWhatWhy reporters faced threats and slammed doors when they tried to investigate her hometown. The silence was deafening.

Coincidences take a lot of planning. as Malcolm Nance says-Joyce Vance says ‘coincidences don’t really exist in law enforcement’ There is also FDR’s saying that there are no coincidences in politics. 

At the very least it seems we should be skeptical of coincidences that seem too convenient.

“A thorough WhoWhatWhy investigation seems to suggest the latter. Our work has turned up a fascinating cast of characters, some with political connections, who were closely connected to a sequence of events that began with a teenage girl in North Carolina sending fan messages to Congressman Weiner, and ended in one of the biggest electoral upsets in American history. (We will only refer to her as “the girl” since she is still under 18 and the victim of a sex crime.)

FN: Although she and her father were happy to do public interviews. Link…

Exclusive: How Trump Backers Weaponized Anthony Weiner to Defeat Clinton

🧨 Chuck Johnson’s Role

Chuck C. Johnson, the far-right provocateur who paid Sydney Leathers for dirt in 2016, reappears here.

“Back in May, we first reported that the “sexting” episode resulting in Weiner’s arrest may have been driven in part by a deliberate effort to harm Clinton. We detailed the role of Trump sympathizers in making sure the story took hold and gained maximum attention, while also looking at ties to the law enforcement agencies that acted with surprising speed and vigor — a response which led to the discovery of Clinton’s emails on the computer used by Weiner and his wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin.”

In the previous chapter we looked at the fact that Chuck Johnson had paid Sydney Leathers in 2016 for dirt on Weiner. Here we see his fingerprints emerge again at an even more insidious point.

“One of these Trump allies was the notorious right-wing provocateur Chuck C. Johnson, who rated high enough in the new president’s firmament to snag a coveted invite to his super-secretive victory party. Multiple sources have informed WhoWhatWhy that Johnson and the girl communicated during the time she was sexting with Weiner. While the details of their conversations are murky, the very fact that the girl and Johnson communicated seems highly significant.”

So Johnson was paying for dirt on Weiner and he spoke to the then underage girl while she was sexting Weiner-prior to her and her father subsequently claiming she was the victim of Weiner’s sexts-despite her having solicited them. His role was more than simply passively hoping for such dirt-he proactively sought to manufacture it. The idea he spoke directly to the underage girl certainly does seem highly significant.

“Johnson is especially close to deep-pocketed fellow “right-wing populist” Erik Prince, founder of the mercenary army formerly called Blackwater.”

FN: In chapter Leeden Manifesto we see that Prince partially funded Peter Smith’s Russian hacker scheme to get Clinton’s emails. We also see that in that chapter that Chuck Johnson himself sent the late Peter Smith a threatening email-apparently an attempt to extort the emails for him on behalf of Prince’s BFF Steve Bannon.

“Recently, the New York Times lent significant — if typically subtle and easily overlooked — credence to WhoWhatWhy’s early hypothesis that there was more to the story than Weiner’s illicit and disturbing conduct.”

Johnson wasn’t just hoping for scandal—he was manufacturing it. His ties to Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater and close ally of Steve Bannon, deepen the intrigue. Prince, as we’ll explore in the Leeden Manifesto chapter, helped fund Peter Smith’s Russian hacker scheme to obtain Clinton’s emails.

🧨 The FBI’s October Surprise

The FBI’s decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation—based on emails found on Weiner’s laptop—was the final blow. It came just days before the election. And it was triggered by a case that began with a politically motivated sting.

“Coincidences take a lot of planning.”

As Malcolm Nance and Joyce Vance have said, law enforcement doesn’t operate on coincidence. And as FDR put it: “In politics, nothing happens by accident.”

🧠 The Girl Was Already in Motion

“All that was missing was a girl to lure Weiner into another ‘sexting’ transgression. Then the trap could be sprung and the computer contents publicized.”

That girl was already being groomed—by her father and by political operatives. Down in North Carolina, a teenager raised by a right-wing father reportedly aspired to be “the next Monica Lewinsky.” She initiated contact with Weiner, documented their exchanges, and sold her story to DailyMail.com for $30,000—just one day before her 16th birthday3.

Coincidences take a lot of planning.

🧨 The Political Machinery Behind the Scandal

The MSM treated the scandal as manna from heaven, never asking where it came from—just reacting to the content. It’s the same playbook used with Wikileaks. And it’s why Roger Stone and friends were able to take down Al Franken so easily. It’s why Democrats demanded resignations from Virginia’s top three officials based on stories from Big League Politics, a Breitbart-linked outlet run by Roy Moore’s aides.

UPDATE: Add Katie Hill to the list—forced out over revenge porn from her abusive ex-husband. What a victory for #MeToo.

🕵️‍♀️ The Girl’s Motives Exposed

Initially, the girl claimed to be mortified that she had damaged Clinton’s chances. She even said she was “upset with Comey.” But that was a ruse. She later told investigators that she hoped to:

• Influence the U.S. presidential election
• Secure personal profit

Check and check. Not bad for someone just shy of the age of consent.

“She offered to ‘prove she had a vagina,’ selectively took screenshots, and documented the exchanges before they disappeared.”

If she were an adult, she’d be condemned like Don Segretti, Roger Stone, or Erik Prince. Instead, she’s cast as a pure victim. But her actions—soliciting sexts to entrap Weiner and weaponize the scandal—suggest complicity.

🧨 Chuck Johnson and Sydney Leathers Reappear

Chuck Johnson, who paid Sydney Leathers for Weiner dirt in 2016, also communicated directly with the underage girl during the sexting period. That’s not passive involvement—it’s active orchestration.

Sydney Leathers, who derailed Weiner’s 2013 mayoral run, was contacted by the girl in May 2016. Leathers told her to go to the police. The girl refused. Instead, Leathers advised her on how to cash in.

So during the months the girl was sexting Weiner:

• Her father was aware and encouraged it
• She spoke to Leathers (who had taken Weiner down before)
• She spoke to Johnson (who was paying Leathers for dirt)

This wasn’t just a scandal—it was a coordinated operation.

🧾 The Memo That Changed the Narrative

“Up until then, Weiner’s attorney, Arlo Devlin-Brown, himself had expressed no doubts at all about the media-consensus account of what happened — which painted the story as nothing more than a deviant Weiner taking advantage of a teenage girl.”

“That changed on September 13. In a story mainly about Weiner’s remorse and struggle to avoid jail time, the paper quoted from a memo put together by Devlin-Brown — selecting comments that implicitly raised flags about the motivation behind the girl’s contacting Weiner in the first place.”

“This is significant because, until then, the news media had given no consideration to larger forces being in play.”

But finally-arguably belatedly-Devlin-Brown submitted a sentencing memo that quietly shattered the media narrative. It revealed:

• The girl initiated contact
• She documented the exchanges for profit
• She sold her story to DailyMail.com for $30,000
• She told investigators she wanted to influence the election

The memo also asked the court to investigate:

• Political motivations by the girl or her father
• Disclosures made to the Trump campaign or its surrogates

And the timing? The DailyMail.com article ran one day before the girl turned 16—allowing them to legally describe her as 15.

⚖️ Legal and Moral Complexity

Weiner pled guilty. But guilty pleas don’t always mean moral guilt. Sometimes they’re strategic. Sometimes they’re coerced by shame or bad legal advice.

“Anyone who presumes guilt solely because someone pled guilty needs to watch How to Get Away With Murder sometime.”

Weiner wasn’t innocent—but he was entrapped. The girl and her father wanted him to sext her. They succeeded. And the scandal they engineered helped take down Hillary Clinton.

“The next day, the Times ran a piece which amplified Devlin-Brown’s questions about the girl’s motives and cyber-messaging behaviors. In it, the defense counsel’s memo was quoted in detail, describing the girl’s highly sexualized attempts to get “Anthony to act out” — beginning with her initial messages to him, which offered to “prove she had a vagina” — as well as her “selectively taking screenshots of her phone to document the exchanges before they disappeared.”

This is what’s so complicated about this case. Because she was underage when this happened she’s presumed to be a victim full stop. Yet her motivation is such that if she were an adult she could go to prison-she conspired through fraudulent means to effect the result of an election-the American Presidential election and she succeeded. If she were of age she’d be publicly burned in effigy-I don’t mean literally, of course, but her actions would be condemned just as those of Don Segretti, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, or Erik Prince. And I can buy that she’s a victim of a sort but if so it’s of her right wing father who was very happy to use the money she raised to pay for his own gambling debts.

📎 Footnotes

1. Weiner Sentencing Memo (PDF)
2. WhoWhatWhy: How Trump Backers Weaponized Anthony Weiner
3. DailyMail.com exposé on Weiner and the underage girl
4. Sydney Leathers interview with The Cut