(JTA) — Disgraced former New York congressman Anthony Weiner says the New York Post set him up for another online sex scandal.
On a radio show Sunday in Miami, Weiner said he was a “target” of the newspaper after his admitted suggestive online messaging to someone he thought was a female college student was first reported by the Post more than a week ago, the newspaper reported.
Weiner had told the student, who turned out to be a young man posing as a woman named “Nikki” by using a friend’s Twitter account, that he was “deceptively strong … like a mongoose” in boasting of what the newspaper called his “animal prowess.”
Weiner had started the chat from a hotel room in Los Angeles, where he had traveled to appear on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” The text conversation continued for four days and ended with Weiner giving out his cellphone number in an attempt to meet up, according to the Post.
After the messaging was revealed, Weiner told the Post, “I can confirm that I am indeed deceptively strong like a mongoose,” and added his messages were just a “playful joust with an obvious catfish.”
A catfish is one who attempts to trap a public figure into a flirtatious online chat in order to ruin his or her reputation.
Weiner resigned from Congress in 2011 after he was caught sending an explicit photo to a female Twitter follower and later admitted to sending photos to several women. Two years later he attempted a comeback by running for mayor of New York and was caught flirting on Twitter again and sexting using the nom de plume Carlos Danger.
He is married to Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton. Abedin, who is half Indian and half Pakistani, is currently under fire for being listed as an editor for several years on the masthead of a radical Muslim journal. The story also was first reported by the Post.
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