Anthony Weiner is back on the encrypted messaging app Confide where he conducted a sexting relationship with a 15-year-old girl, according...
Anthony Weiner is back on the encrypted messaging app Confide where he conducted a sexting relationship with a 15-year-old girl, according to reports.
The disgraced politician, 56, rejoined the app which deletes messages as soon as they are read leaving no digital trace.
An anonymous Confide user, who had Weiner's email saved in their contacts, received a message last week saying: 'New friend. Anthony Weiner joined Confide. Send Anthony a message now.'
Anthony Weiner is back on the encrypted messaging app Confide where he conducted a sexting relationship with a 15-year-old girl, according to reports
The convicted sex offender used the app to send sexually explicit messages to the schoolgirl, which was exclusively revealed by DailyMail.com in 2016, leading to his arrest.
When asked by Page Six if he had returned to Confide, Weiner showed a reminder from the app to open his unread messages and said: 'Yeah I got this.'
It comes after it was revealed this week that the former Democrat lawmaker, who served 15 months in a federal prison, is in a 12-step program for sex addiction.
The former New York Congressman and mayoral candidate is also considering selling the infamous photo of him in his underwear, which ultimately led to his downfall.
Anthony Weiner's political career fell apart after tweeting a picture of him in his underpants in 2011, which prompted journalists to search for other illicit messages and photos he took, including this one
He told the New York Times on June 3, he is thinking about getting into the business of digital collectibles, known as non-fungible tokens.
An NFT is a unique digital token encrypted with an artist's signature and which verifies its ownership and authenticity and is permanently attached to the piece.
It allows 'original' versions of popular online content - like viral memes and tweets - to be sold as if they were physical pieces of art.
Weiner said he has some of his own he could sell, including the photo that was tweeted in 2011 showing the congressman in his underwear.
He said he would also consider selling a picture of then-FBI Director James Comey's search warrant for his laptop — which Comey later claimed included emails prompting him to reopen the investigation into presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's emails.
Also up for sale could be an email from his former roommate and good friend Jon Stewart apologizing for the jokes he made on air about Weiner's sex scandals, and a check former President Donald Trump wrote to one of his earlier campaigns.
'Cashing in would be nice,' Weiner said, but he said he would also like to make a career out of it by selling 'my own stuff, but also to create a new category that lets people buy and sell political collectibles as a form of political fundraising and contributing.'
the disgraced former New York Congressman and mayoral candidate is considering selling the infamous photo of him in his underwear that he tweeted out in 2011 and which ultimately led to his downfall
'If you do believe in this butterfly effect,' Weiner said, 'I've got the butterfly's wings and antenna.'
Weiner was somewhat of a political celebrity in the early 2000s, representing a New York City congressional district for about 10 years.
In July 2010, he was the first congressman to go viral for a speech on the House floor screaming at Republicans for not backing a bill to give health care to those caught in the September 11 attacks, according to Buzzfeed.
But by May 2011, a lewd photo of him in his boxers was posted to his Twitter account.
In a series of tweets after the picture went viral, Weiner claimed his account was hacked, writing 'Touche Prof Moriarity. More Weiner Jokes for all my guests! #Hacked!' and 'Tivo shot. FB hacked. Is my blender gonna attack me next? #TheToasterIsVeryLoyal.'
Journalists then began to search for other illicit photos and messages Weiner sent, and by June 6, he held a press conference, confessing that he had sent sexual photos and messages to women online over the course of a few years.
He said at the time he 'deeply' regretted his actions, but would not resign from Congress.
Just 10 days later, though, he did.
In 2013, he tried using a New York City mayoral race to mark his comeback and was leading in the polls for a while, but in July, a young woman from Indiana named Sydney Leathers shared explicit photos and messages he sent her using the alias 'Carlos Danger.'
Weiner soon admitted he had never stopped sexting, Buzzfeed reported, and around the same time, a former campaign intern decided to write a tell-all about her experience on the campaign.
His campaign soon unraveled as a documentary crew filmed every moment of his downfall, which ultimately led to the rise of Mayor Bill de Blasio.
He said that even at the time, he knew his campaign was doomed.
'I was famous for being famous, and I was a candidate because I had been a candidate and I had all the money from past campaigns,' he told the New York Times earlier this month.
In 2013, Weiner held a press conference with his wife Huma Abedin, an aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, announcing he never stopped sexting
But, he said, the social media storm he was in felt new at the time. 'We didn't know what we were working with at the time, and I was lying to everyone around me.'
He seemed to have dropped from the media scrutiny after that for a few years, but in 2016 DailyMail.com exclusively reported that he was exchanging explicit messages with a 15-year-old who claimed he asked her to dress up in 'school-girl' outfits for him and pressed her to engage in rape fantasies.
Weiner seemed to have known that the girl was underage at the time, but sent her bare-chested photos of himself, repeatedly called the girl 'baby,' complimented her body and told her that he woke up 'hard' after thinking about her.
In one particularly lewd message, he told the teenager: 'I would bust that p***y so hard and so often that you would leak and limp for a week.'
He did not deny sending the messages when DailyMail.com approached him about them and said in a statement: 'I have repeatedly demonstrated terrible judgment about the people I have communicated with online and the things I have sent. I am filled with regret and heartbroken for those I have hurt.'
After the texts were published, former FBI Director James Comey got a warrant for his laptop, later writing a letter to Congress saying new emails discovered on the laptop led him to reopen the investigation into then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's emails.
Text messages from the time show he once told her he woke up 'hard' thinking about her
Weiner was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison in Massachusetts and three more in a Bronx halfway house. He is seen here leaving the halfway house in May 2019
Weiner and his wife Huma Abedin, an aide to Clinton, announced they were getting divorced that August, and in 2017, Weiner was sentenced to 21 months in prison for sending obscene material to a minor.
He served 15 months in federal prison in Massachusetts and three more in a Bronx halfway house.
He has spent most of the past year running a Brooklyn-based environmentally sustainable countertop company, the Times reports, which offers job interviews to former felons.
He is now in the process of stepping down as chief executive of the company, called IceStone, to try to turn the company into a 'worker-run' cooperative.
There is no indication of how much Weiner's underwear snap could sell for as an NFT, but the creators of popular memes have been raking in thousands by selling the 'original' versions online.