What to do about Weiner

I've been following the Anthony Weiner debacle out of technical interest.

Right now it looks like he is going to end up resigning (my estimate is 80% chance).

I have been looking for good timelines of what happened and they are all fundamentally incomplete.

A Timeline of Weiner's Sexting Scandal


His original reaction was to say he was hacked. To technical people this looked very dubious. There are at least two ways to forge a twitter message from his account but the most obvious one would have required a current or former staffer to be the source. Which would make the email a prank (malicious or not). If his account had been actually hacked (someone had gained control of his account) that would not be something he could undo in 4 minutes.

But let's assume that he was right. What would an actually wronged congressman do? He would contact the FBI, who would have a fairly easy time finding who was fault.

What did Anthony Weiner do: the day of the underwear twitter message almost all the photos were stripped from Weiner's accounts, some tweets were deleted, the target of the email had her online presence erased, and a lawyer was contacted.


A good analogy is the case where someone claims they had a break-in at their home. Instead of contacting the sheriff, they burn down their home and contact a lawyer.


I'm going to assume (for argument) that Weiner made a simple mistake and sent a photo link when he didn't mean to. What he should have done is delete the tweet then, when confronted, said something to the effect: "I sent a photo link by mistake. This carelessness act reflects badly on my constituents and my wife. I apologize to them and will try in the future to be the exemplary example that they deserve. "


If that had been his reaction, there would have been no story (he'd been single a long time and probably hadn't thought through how some of his e-communications would look to other people.)

Instead his original suspicious actions were followed by a week of clearly incorrect statements including "he can’t say 'with certitude' whether or not a lewd below-the-belt photo depicted his body" which just encouraged a lot of digging:

Anthony Weiner Scandal: A Timeline of Deceit - ABC News

A WEINERGATE stalemate?

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE

At this point enough dirt has been dug up on Weiner that, on top of a week of dissembling, it doesn't appear that he could be able to effectively represent his voters. The public trust is a requirement for a successful politician. Weiner doesn't appear to have that anymore.

I feel sorry for Weiner. If he had been honest up-front ...