Counter Evidence: Weiner's former roommate Jon Stewart's testimony, "My memory is this cat had a lot more Anthony and a lot less weiner."
Theory #4: There Was No Hack, but Weiner Is Still the Victim of a Conservative Smear Campaign
Proponent: Joseph Cannon, blogger
Supporting Evidence: This is a little more complicated, so bear with us. As Weiner maintained his innocence in the face of the lewd tweeting accusations, blogger Joseph Cannon rose to his defense with an explanation of how no hacking would be required to pull of a Yfrog prank like this and even names Dan Wolfe as the prankster. Wolfe, a self-described "Conservative Reagan Republican" retweeted the original tweet from Weiner's account along with the caption "Anthony Weiner tweets X RATED PIC TO FOLLOWER!" According to Cannon, Wolfe is "pathologically" obsessed with Weiner and was somehow able to access the email address for uploading photos to Weiner's account. (Yfrog provides unique addresses to each user for uploading and tweeting photos via email.) As Weiner's original tweet didn't include any content besides the photo, characteristic of an emailed post, this is a possible scenario. As Mediaite notes, the screenshot of the photo being passed around originates from the Publius post, a scenario that also hints the work of one saboteur.
Counter Evidence: It's a pretty elaborate scheme. In Cannon's scenario Wolfe would have discovered the email address to upload and tweet a photo from Weiner's Yfrog account, grab the screenshot on Yfrog, retweet the tweet from Weiner's account and possibly tip off Publius at Big Government all within a few minutes. Weiner admitted to deleting the tweet which some may say proves his involvement, but as Cannon points out, anyone who pays attention to their stream would have deleted the seemingly spammy tweet.
Theory #5: This Is All Just a Dirty Trick to Repeal Health Care Reform
Proponent: The Daily Kos Community
Supporting Evidence: This is definitely reaching. According to a couple of bloggers in The Daily Kos community, this "distraction" came at the same time that Weiner was reigniting his campaign against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. After all, it was Friday when Weiner lambasted Thomas over Twitter for not recusing himself of potential challenges to Obama's health care reform legislation. Since Thomas's wife runs tea party organization Liberty Central and founded an anti-health care reform consulting group, he's clearly partial in any health care case, some argue. The tweet that launched the entire scandal came from Weiner's account that night. So in a (very) roundabout way, this is some rogue rightwing attempt to kill Obamacare.
Counter Evidence: The timing is all wrong. Harvard Law Professor Charles Fried told The Atlantic Wire that any attempt to force a recusal from Clarence Thomas was akin to "getting fired from a job you never had." Of course, as attempts to declare Obamacare unconstitutional bubble up in federal courts, a conflict of interest may force Thomas to make a decision. But it will be months until the Supreme Court hears anything health care related.
This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.