The second image below is an exact duplication, in top-to-bottom chronological order of Rep. Anthony Weiner’s actual Twitter timeline on the night of what’s now being called Weinergate. It includes a now deleted Tweet of an explicit image, which can also now be determined to have been Tweeted at 11:30 PM ET on the night of May 27. That’s made possible by referencing two existing time-lines, Weiner’s own on Twitter and that of TweetCongress, an official Tweet stream of all Representatives. Evidently, it is cached separately, as while Weiner deleted the offending Tweet from his Twitter account, it remained at TweetCongress when last checked and screen capped, though the linked image is unavailable. That would have been deleted at Yfrog. But the Tweet is unmistakeably the one in question.
It is the center Tweet in the screen cap below. Because we can determine where it appeared in his timeline down to the minute and have the actual Twitter timestamps for his other Tweets via his Twitter page, we can demonstrate the actual time of the controversial Tweet to have been 11:30 PM, as stated above.
Several valid questions emerge from an analysis of Weiner’s actual real-time Tweet stream. See below.
The tech-savvy congressman saw the picture almost immediately. He had been tweeting about a hockey game just a few minutes earlier.
The time-line above proves that to be false. He was not Tweeting anything for over 3 hours before the image emerged. Furthermore, Weiner is known to constantly interact with those who tweet to him. He even interacts with another Tweet directed at him in the above time-line. Given the existence of the Tweet when he allegedly signed onto Twitter four minutes after the image appeared, and that it was re-Tweeted, why would he have not seen it immediately, as opposed to over an hour later, as has been claimed.
Weiner pulled the shot himself, but not before it had been retweeted and screen-grabbed by several followers. Weiner, a voracious user of Twitter, wrote a humorous response about 15 minutes later.
Again, per the actual time-line, Weiner’s joke did not come fifteen minutes after the image appeared and was deleted, it came an hour and 24 minutes later at 12:54 AM on the 28th. Did Weiner use this time to begin interacting privately with the woman who received the Tweet? Were he DM’ing with her, that would be more logical than his taking over an hour to spot something quickly being re-Tweeted by others. Something was going on in the intervening time-frame, so what was it?
Note the first tweet in the above graphic: “Heading to 30 Rock to chat with Rachel at 9. #Thats545InSeattleIThink.” Neither Weiner nor his staff have explained the uncanny coincidence that the congressman was tweeting out the time in Seattle just a few hours before the the now infamous crotch-shot tweet was addressed to a Seattle co-ed.
Furthermore, Weiner recently supported a failed cyber security bill. That is not in line with his simply making light of what he first claimed to be a hack of an official government account. It simply does not add up.
It also now seems that while asked repeatedly, Weiner staffers have not denied that the image is of Weiner. If it is, but was not Tweeted to the woman by him, that would seem to indicate an alleged hacker has access to his private image archive. As sources on the Hill have told me, without an official investigation, there is no way of knowing to what extent any alleged hacking may have taken place. That could mean a hacker taking advantage of the pertinent Government Virtual Private Network, or VPN, through Weinier’s hacked accounts could have access to secured information on government servers in Washington. Yet, Weiner is now saying it’s only a prank?
Clearly, there is much that is not adding up as regards Weiner’s version of events and his response to them. Weiner needs to come clean as to how an alleged image of his weiner made it onto the Internet and his lack of candor and forthrightness so far is extremely troubling on multiple levels, at best.