As the Associated Press (AP) wire reported live from the New York City federal courtroom in which Anthony Weiner was sentenced to 21 months in prison Monday, defeated presidential candidate Hillary Clinton featured prominently in their coverage.
The six-year salacious scandal that saw Weiner, the former Democratic congressman from New York, disgraced, departed from office, decisively defeated in the New York City mayoral election, and finally a defendant in a sex crimes trial, began through the efforts of Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart in 2011.
When the sexual deviance-drenched saga reached its seeming conclusion Monday with Weiner due to report to federal prison this November, the AP referred to it as the “sexting scandal that some blame for Hillary Clinton’s presidential loss” and “a case that may have cost Hillary Clinton’s [sic] the presidency.”
The investigation into Hillary’s private email server, which she set up in violation of state department policy and which many saw as potentially criminal, was thrust back onto center stage of the 2016 presidential election in October when the unrelated investigation of Weiner’s criminal “sexting” with a 15-year-old girl turned up thousands of Clinton emails on his devices. The devices of Weiner’s wife, top Clinton campaign staffer Huma Abedin, were also searched as then-FBI Director James Comey relaunched the Clinton investigation months after he tried to put the matter to rest that summer.
Coming only weeks before the election, the revelation cast additional suspicion of wrongdoing on the already widely mistrusted Mrs. Clinton. An email from 2010 asking for the then-Congressman Weiner to get a “trusted staffer” to deliver a “secure phone” for the then-Secretary of State, broke before the election. After President Donald Trump took office, Comey admitted under oath that not only did Weiner have access to classified emails, Huma Abedin was not being truthful when she claimed to have no idea how Weiner got them. She forwarded them to her husband.
As the AP reported it, the Weiner sexting investigation “also became an issue in the closing days of 2016 presidential election when then FBI Director James Comey cited emails discovered on a laptop used by Weiner to justify reopening the probe of Clinton’s private computer server.”
Hillary and her surrogates later used the FBI announcement of the fact her emails showed up on the computer of a man under investigation for asking a 15-year-old to undress and masturbate for him on webcam as one of the many explanations, along with “Russia” and “misogyny,” for her shocking loss to Donald Trump. Clinton eventually went so far as to claim, “If the election were on October 27 [the day before Comey announced the Weiner emails], I’d be your president.”
In focusing so heavily on that aspect of Weiner’s sentencing, the AP appears to find credence in this election assessment by Hillary.
If Hillary is to be believed, and the AP’s reporting emphasis justified, Weiner’s predilections, first made famous by Andrew Breitbart, sowed the seeds of Hillary’s historic defeat.
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