Sexts, Lies, and Video Clips: A Timeline of Weiner in His Own Words

As a public service: A timeline of what Anthony Weiner said — publicly and privately — about the sexually explicit messages he sent to young women. The candidate, in his own words.

As a public service: A timeline of what Anthony Weiner said — publicly and privately — about the sexually explicit messages he sent to young women.

The candidate, in his own words

Friday, May 27, 2011, around 11:00 p.m.	Weiner tweets the now-famous photo of his grey underwear to Gennette Nicole Cordova and then quickly deletes it.
Saturday, May 28, 2011, 12:54 a.m.	Tivo shot. FB hacked. Is my blender gonna attack me next? #TheToasterIsVeryLoyal — Anthony Weiner (@repweiner) May 28, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011, 10:19 p.m.	Politico gets Weiner's response to a Breitbart story about the photo. The New York Democrat told POLITICO he thought it “obvious” that his account had been taken over, and he tweeted that his Facebook account had been hacked with the abbreviation “FB hacked.” ... “The weiner gags never get old, I guess, ” the veteran lawmaker emailed a POLITICO reporter in response on Saturday.
Saturday, May 28, 2011, 5:08 p.m.	Weiner responds to Breitbart.com's pursuit of the image. Touche Prof Moriarity. More Weiner Jokes for all my guests! #Hacked! — Anthony Weiner (@repweiner) May 28, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011	Weiner addresses reporters, as reported by The Times. On Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Weiner, in a news conference at the Capitol, declined to elaborate further, even as reporters peppered him with questions, including whether he had sent the picture and why he had not yet asked law enforcement to investigate. He responded that he had already spent several days discussing the matter, would not go into it any further and preferred to turn his attention to a vote on the debt limit on Tuesday night. “If I was giving a speech to 45,000 people and someone in the back of the room threw a pie or yelled out an insult,” he stated, “would I spend the next two hours responding to that?” When a CNN producer interrupted to accuse him of dodging questions, Mr. Weiner seemed to become frustrated, pointed a finger at the producer and referred to him with a derogatory term. Mr. Weiner then called the matter “a distraction” and told the reporters circling him to refer to the statements he had released. Why don't you do the questions, and I'll do the answers.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011, evening	Weiner appears on CNN. Blitzer asks if he sent the picture to Cordova. I did not. She says she never got it and doesn't know me, I certainly don't know her. It seems like it was a prank to make fun of my name. When you have a name like mine it happens a lot. … This seems like a prank that has gotten an enormous amount of attention. Blitzer asks if the picture is him, repeatedly. I can tell you this. We have a firm that we've hired … to try and get to the bottom of it. I can tell you this. Photos can be manipulated. Photos can be of one thing, changed to look like something else.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011, evening	Weiner appears on MSNBC. I didn't send that picture out. Luke Russert: That's not a picture of you? You know, I can't say with certitude. My system was hacked, pictures can be manipulated, pictures can be dropped in and inserted. One of the reasons that I've asked a firm that includes a internet security arm is to take a look at what happened here …
Wednesday, June 1, 2011, evening	Weiner speaks with Rachel Maddow. Someone somehow got access to my Twitter account and tweeted a joke, I guess. When your name is ‘Weiner’ you get some of those sometimes. … The photo does not look familiar to me but a lot of people have said that stuff can get manipulated. Maybe it did start being a photo of mine and now looks something different or maybe it is from another account.
Thursday, June 2, 2011, morning	This prank apparently has been successful.
Monday, June 6, 2011, 4:25 p.m.	After new photos from other women emerge, Weiner confesses. Via the New York Post, a partial transcript. At the outset, I'd like to make it clear that I have made terrible mistakes that have hurt the people I care about the most, and I'm deeply sorry. I have not been honest with myself, my family, my constituents, my friends and supporters and the media. Last Friday night, I tweeted a photograph of myself that I intended to send as a direct message as part of a joke to a woman in Seattle. Once I realized I had posted it to Twitter, I panicked. I took it down and said that I had been hacked. I then continued with that story -- to stick to that story, which was a hugely regrettable mistake. This woman was unwittingly dragged into this and bears absolutely no responsibility. I am so sorry to have disrupted her life in this way. To be clear, the picture was of me, and I sent it. I am deeply sorry for the pain this has caused my wife Huma and our family and my constituents, my friends, supporters and staff. In addition, over the past few years, I have engaged in several inappropriate conversations conducted over Twitter, Facebook, email and occasionally on the phone with women I had met online. I've exchanged messages and photos of an explicit nature with about six women over the last three years. For the most part, these communications took place before my marriage, though some have sadly took place after. To be clear, I have never met any of these women or had physical relationships at any time. I haven't told the truth, and I've done things that I deeply regret. I brought pain to people I care about the most and the people who believed in me. And for that I'm deeply sorry. I apologize to my wife and our family, as well as to our friends and supporters. I'm deeply ashamed of my terrible judgment and actions.
Thursday, June 16, 2011, 2:21 p.m.	At a bizarre press conference in Brooklyn, Weiner resigns. Partial transcript via NewsMax. I’m here today to again apologize for the personal mistakes I have made and the embarrassment I have caused. I make this apology to my neighbors and constitutents, but I make it particularly to my wife Huma. I had hope to be able to continue the work that the citizens of my district had elected me to do, to fight for the middle class and those struggling to make it. Unfortunately, the distraction I have created has made that impossible. So today I am announcing my resignation from Congress, so my colleagues can get back to work, my neighbors can choose a new representative, and most importantly, so that my wife and I can continue to heal from the damage I have caused.
Thursday, December 22, 2011	Weiner's son Jordan is born, as reported by Fox News. Weiner emailed friends announcing the arrival of their "sparkling wonder." "Did I mention his mom is amazing? We love you for welcoming him," Weiner wrote.
Thursday, July 12, 2012	According to TheDirty.com, Weiner begins interacting with Sydney Leathers on Facebook. That interaction began when Leathers sent a message to Weiner expressing her disappointment in him.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012, 6:20 a.m.	Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin give an exclusive photo and brief interview to People magazine. "I'm very happy in my present life," Weiner, 47, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. "The only next dramatic steps I'm planning on are Jordan's first," he says, referring to his 6-month-old son and remaining noncommital on whether he will run for office again. Abedin also describes the relationship. "It took a lot of work to get to where are are today, but I want people to know we're a normal family," says Abedin, 37. "Anthony has spent every day since [the scandal] trying to be the best dad and husband he can be," she says of her husband, who does all the laundry. "I'm proud to be married to him."
Thursday, July 19, 2012, 4:12 p.m.	Weiner begins following Leathers on Formspring.
August, 2012	Weiner and Leathers exchange explicit messages on Formspring, as reported by TheDirty. Leathers says that Weiner also "offered to help me get a condo in Chicago, without me asking."
November, 2012	According to Leathers, her relationship with Weiner "began to fizzle out."
Early February, 2013	Jonathan Van Meter from The New York Times begins interviews for an article that will run in an April 2013 issue of the Times Magazine. Some excerpts: "I got a call from Chris Cuomo saying that they had someone who was going to say that I texted with her. It reached this point where I just sat down with Huma and said, ‘Listen, I can’t. . . . I don’t want to lie.’ . . . I just didn’t want to lie anymore to her.” Here, his voice cracks and tears well up in his eyes. “I have a choppy memory of it, but she was devastated. She immediately said, ‘Well you’ve got to stop lying to everyone else too.’ And basically we drove back to the city, and she said: ‘You’ve just got to tell everyone the truth. Telling me doesn’t help any.’ It was brutal. It was completely out of control. There was the crime, there was the cover-up, there was harm I had done to her. And there’s no one who deserved this less than Huma. That’s really the bottom line. No one deserved to have a dope like me do that less than she did.” “But in the confines of our home and our relationship and our parenting this child and our love for each other — she said she wanted to get through it, she wanted not to conflate the giant international news story with the two people who were involved in it. And a lot of women couldn’t do that. And Jordan has given us a lot of perspective. We have to deal with this a lot. It’s not behind us. It kind of bubbles around and comes up in different ways. But she’s, um. . . .” Here, he paused and took a deep breath and started to cry. “She’s given. . . .” He stopped again, could barely get the words out. “She’s given me another chance. And I am very grateful for that. And I’m trying to make sure I get it right.” “Also, I want to ask people to give me a second chance. I do want to have that conversation with people whom I let down and with people who put their faith in me and who wanted to support me. I think to some degree I do want to say to them, ‘Give me another chance.’ ”
Thursday, April 11, 2013	The Times Magazine article is published online. According to Leathers, Weiner reactivated his Facebook page and "asked me what I thought of it."
Wednesday, April 24, 2013	Weiner speaks with a reporter from ABC News. "I'm going to spend a lot of time and a lot of days saying I'm sorry to people. And say I'm sorry to people watching this interview. But first and foremost I'm spending a lot of time saying I'm sorry to my wife still," he said … I guess when people ask me, the penance I had to show and repair I had to do was with my wife first and foremost," he said.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013	Weiner announces his candidacy for mayor. Look, I made some big mistakes and I know I let a lot of people down, but I have also learned some tough lessons.
Thursday, May 23, 2013, 2:38 p.m.	Weiner admits that more photos might come out, as reported by CNN. "People may decide they want to come forward and say here's another email that I got or another photo that I got, but I'm certainly not going to do that," he said Thursday in an interview on WNYC. "New Yorkers have seen - frankly people all over the world have seen - I did these inappropriate things over an extended period of time with more than one person."
Tuesday, July 23, 2013	More photos come out — those involving Leathers. Weiner first issues a statement. As I have said in the past, these things that I did were wrong and hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress. While some things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is no question that what I did was wrong. This behavior is behind me. Later in the evening, with Huma at his side, he holds a press conference. Talking Points Memo excerpted Abedin's comments. “Our marriage, like many others, has had its ups and its downs. It took a lot of work and a whole lot of therapy to get to a place where I could forgive him,” Abedin said. “Anthony’s made some horrible mistakes, both before he resigned from Congress and after, but I do very strongly believe that that is between us and our marriage. We discussed all of this before Anthony decided to run for mayor, so really what I want to say is I love him, I have forgiven him, I believe in him and as we have said from the beginning, we are moving forward.” Asked when Abedin knew: She knew all along, this process, as I was more and more honest with her, I told her everything. … This is entirely behind me. I'm not going to get into a back-and-forth with people who are releasing things whether they be true or not. People have a right to say what they want, and I brought it on myself.
Wednesday, July 24, 2013, 2:20 p.m.	In an email to supporters, Weiner offers his latest excuse, as reported by TPM. Sending these embarrassing messages to women online, whom I never met, was a personal failing that was hurtful to my wife and a part of my life that Huma and I have put behind us. These things I did, as you have read in the papers, didn't happen once. It was a terrible mistake that I unfortunately returned to during a rough time in our marriage. After a lot of reflection, some professional help, and a general reorientation of my life, Huma has given me a second chance. I will never stop being grateful for that. Before and after announcing my run for Mayor, I repeatedly answered every question about these mistakes. I was clear that these relationships took place over an extended period of time with more than one person. I regret not saying explicitly when these exchanges happened. But the bottom line is that the "news" today is about my past life. It concludes: This fight is too important to give up, because I've had embarrassing personal things become public. This campaign isn't about me. It's about a great city that is beginning to lose its mantle as the Capital of the Middle Class. It's about the challenge of finding affordable housing, a good job with benefits and a public school that attracts the greatest teachers and produces the smartest kids. This race for Mayor isn’t about me. It's about you. And I'll never lose sight of that. New Yorkers don't quit, and I'll never quit on you.