A new possibility has come up that explains ALL the strange facts in this story…here’s the theory.
1) Weiner didn’t send the photo – it was a frame-up
2) Weiner is hiding something – and the photo is of him (he didn’t deny it today) – and that’s why he doesn’t want a law enforcement investigation OR he knows how sent it.
Here’s a theory on the the photo.. – the photo could have been sent from a phone. (Not sent from a computer.)
I am going out on a limb here and I’d like emphasize this is a THEORY – but one that explains a lot.l. If this happened, I believe the most logical person to have done it is @PatriotUSA76 –a person that we actually know almost nothing about, by the way. For example, I don’t know for sure that their name is Dan Wolfe or even their gender. Like Weiner, I think there’s been some strange behavior on their part as well.
If both PatriotUSA76 AND Rep. Weiner would be less obtuse, this story would be a lot clear. This theory explains why both are acting obtuse.
Here’s what this theory explains
- How the photo got into Weiner’s Twit Strem
- Weiner’s claim he didn’t send the photo
- Weiner’s refusal to say the photo wasn’t him
- Some bizarre behavior I’ve witnessed from @PatriotUSA76
- @PatriotUSA76 saying repeatedly that anyone could look at their computer
- The EXIF on the photo not matching
- Weiner’s claim today “Pictures can be manipulated. Pictures can be dropped in and inserted.”
- Weiner statements that he had not called police to investigate the matter
- Gennette’s claim not to be involved
Patriot’s Story Of How They Saw The Tweet Is Very Implausible
Here’s what Patriot told me….
I never folllowed Gennette. I said before I was on Weiner’s page when it happened. Said a few times already
Direct message sent by Dan Wolfe (@patriotusa76) to you (@Stranahan) on May 31, 10:36 PM.
Someone should talk about coincidence of why Weiner was right there to delete tweet. That’s a big coincidence too.
Direct message sent by Dan Wolfe (@patriotusa76) to you (@Stranahan) on May 31, 11:10 PM.
Not only was he right there to delete the tweet – which he admits. He deleted it seconds after – 1-5 seconds. Pretty big conincidence
Direct message sent by Dan Wolfe (@patriotusa76) to you (@Stranahan) on May 31, 11:29 PM.
We know from the timeline that RepWeiner didn’t have a public tweet for 3+ hours.
Then the picture came in
Patriot says they had Weiner’s page up. Why? Again — Weiner hadn’t said anything for 3+ hours. Why keep the page up?
Then the the tweet with the picture goes up and according to Patriot, within 5 seconds Weiner took the tweet down. BUT – there’s no way for Patriot to have known that.
And Patriot saw it – how again?
From Scoovy In Comments…
I agree with a lot of this and have talked to people about it but haven’t written it down yet. So I’ll just copy and paste – read their whole comment , about 84 in
Let’s say that Weiner has in fact been engaging in inappropriate DM tweets with girls. Perhaps through a tip, the patriotusa76 crowd heard about this. Someone (not saying it was patriotusa76 himself) figured out a way to get into Weiner’s twitter account and was able to read these conversations as they were happening. I’m not saying Weiner was hacked and his password was changed. I’m saying someone had gained knowledge of Weiner’s Twitter password. The knowledge of these conversations was then leaked to a small group of twitter partisans (patriotusa76, goatred, etc.) Let’s say this has been going on for some time and started several weeks ago.
This would explain why this crowd knew of a looming twitter sex scandal that would involve Weiner and an incriminating photo/image, as well as his inappropriate messages. But this knowledge presented a problem — how to get this info out into the world. If this was in fact going on and the “hacker” knew about it, the “hacker” couldn’t leak it himself — it was private info that was gained illegally. So why not take the incriminating photo that’s been screengrabbed (again, I’m saying that Weiner actually did DM the photo, but did it perhaps weeks ago), log into his Twitter account and make it look like Weiner “accidentally” sent it publicly. Presto — Weiner has been “outed.”
In this scenario, both sides are technically right — Weiner was “hacked,” but Weiner actually did send the photo once upon a time and has been engaged in improper behavior
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“If it were a jilted ex, than most likely its not someone from over 2 years ago. Which would still mean that weiner was cheating on huma.”
I never said it was a “jilted X” I think some of you are wishing it to be so, I said it may have been an ex girlfriend.Unless you’re assuming that ex girlfriend = angry ex-girlfriend. Is there a date stamp on the picture? Did I miss something? How on Earth could you know this pics original use? Maybe it was sent to Huma when they were dating, hell, maybe she took it. Or maybe it’s an old pic from his single days. I would love to know why anyone here is assuming it’s a recent pic.
Where is any shread of proof that he was sending it out to women who are folowing him on twitter? You would think at least one would come out into the spotlight. There’s some “mental gymnastics” being done on this site, that’s for sure.
I’m thinking this yfrog hack theory is bunk now. Weiner can’t deny the photo is him because his wife knows it is him, she knows his underwear and also in the photo you can see some distinctive flooring, probably in their house.
Weiner made up the hack theory so he can tell wife he did not send it to the coed. If he really was hacked he would have gone to FBI immediately.
Ok, so it was an exgirlfriend, who was so happy about being dumped, that she hacked weiners account?
Or are you saying it was Huma? They’ve been together since at least 2007. The problem is, there’s a very simple explanation, and it doesn’t require a conspiracy.
He can’t say that its not a picture of him. The picture went from his yfrog to his twitter to the girl who has a crush on him. After not being on twitter for what, 3 hours, he spots the hacked message within minutes, without anyone alerting him to it. Then, his yfrog is deleted along with the girl’s twitter account.
I know when I get an email from a friend offering free viagra (the surest sign one has been hacked), I don’t respond by deleting my email account.
Its not the tweet that’s the scandal anymore. Its the cover-up.
“Ok, so it was an exgirlfriend, who was so happy about being dumped, that she hacked weiners account?”
OMG,what?
The picture was hacked out of his yfrog account. Where did I imply it was hacked by an ex girlfriend?
“Its not the tweet that’s the scandal anymore. Its the cover-up.”
Right, keep moving those goalposts.
What “cover up”? He’s hired computer experts to find the hack, I think Breitbark may be getting nervous.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/republican-ohio-speaker-appears-to-support-democrats-liberal-groups-thanks-to-twitter-hacker/2011/06/02/AGGPS7GH_story.html
still no answer on why this guy hasn’t called in the FBI or when Breitbart will cover it. “Hacking is a serious crime” right, Breitbart?
LOL notyouagain
Breitbart and all of us would love for FBI to investigate, Weiner is the one who does not want to go there. Guess why? Cuz he wants to save taxpayers money…hahahaaha
all it would cost is an order to twitter and yfrog to cough up the data on who did what
My apologies notyou. I thought you were saying that he sent it to an ex and that’s who was hacking him. To clarify, you’re just stating that he could have taken the pic for either his wife or an ex, and that’s how it was in his yfrog?
And why would breitbart be nervous? All he’s done is report it. Oh, I forgot. He’s got that (D) after his name. Its obviously the reporters fault for covering the story. That makes sense.
If I had to guess, I’d say that it’s because there is a list of people who have his password, and he doesn’t seem to be one of them. This is his work account and he doesn’t use it, staffers do. It could have been any one of them, or anyone who knows any of them. When a password is floating around, it’s insecure.
In Weiner’s case, this is his personal account, and he’s tech savvy. His staffers aren’t tweeting on that account, Weiner is. If I were him and I were hacked like that, I’d call the cops. Would you?
You don’t need to be much of an expert. You just need access to the Twitter and yfrog logs, which cops with subpoenas would get in a New York minute. Private lawyers, not so much.
You know what would also explain all of this? Weiner accidentally tweeted the pic and lied about it.
Or maybe it was Col. Mustard in the Study with a candlestick?
It’s a damn shame we don’t have an agency that investigates such “crimes”…
Sorry not wanting an official investigating is an admission of guilt in my book. You can turn the kaleidoscope of what if’s all day long. All it does is make reality look far more confusing than it actually is.
Has anyone brought in time travel to the equation? It certainly isn’t outside the realm of possibilities, is it? You never know someone might know how to time travel. What about Dick Chenney has he been blamed yet? There has to be some evidence that he’s involved too if we just look hard enough.
What about Bush!?!
He’d be the trigger man for Chenney’s diabolical scheme.
What about Breitbart? Oh never mind he has already been blamed. So it’s Breitbart and Patriot76 and not all the people acting suspiciously that are actually in control of the two accounts. Yep nothing to see here move along.
Lee you’re letting the old liberal side of your brain do mental gymnastics to make the improbable possible. Unless of course you blog has been #hacked !!!!111!!!
New theory Lee’s blog has been hacked by Weiner to put for this preposterous theory.
Could someone please point out to one case of the police or FBI investigating a Twitter hack (besides the president’s twitter page). Just one?
When will the republican from Ohio be calling in the police? Anyone?
Here’s the easiest explanation yet: Weiner and his new wife like to send each other sexy pics,someone found them and posted them. Weiner doesn’t think he owes Breitbart an explanation.
Why would this picture be used? Is there no better one? Is it a hint to Weiner that a better, more incriminating one is out there?
“Here’s the easiest explanation yet: Weiner and his new wife like to send each other sexy pics…”
So the underwear pic is sexy, eh? O.o
It’s not easier than the theory that Weiner forgot to type the letter ‘d’ when DMing GC.
“Weiner doesn’t think he owes Breitbart an explanation.”
Weiner doesn’t seem to think he owes anyone an explanation.
If you just want one, why isn’t Obama’s sufficient?
He didn’t sit down for hour upon hour in interviews yesterday with Breitbart. This is not a story about Breitbart, regardless of how much you’d like it to be. No one disputes that the tweet came from Weiner’s account. Who sent it? How did they get the picture? Those are the questions that everyone is asking, and that Weiner doesn’t seem to want an answer to.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/bizarre/dan-wolfe-anthony-weiner-weinergate-632095
Notyou,
That’s not the easiest answer, just one you’re hoping for. The easy answer is weiner made a mistake, and now he’s lied about it.
“Who sent it? How did they get the picture?” Isn’t that exactly what he said he hired the experts to find out? Why, yes it was.
“Who sent it? How did they get the picture? Isn’t that exactly what he said he hired the experts to find out?”
Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to go to the police or FBI?
Notyou,
What does that article prove? That the guy who tipped journalists (which used to be a confidential thing, in which journalists used to willingly serve jail time than give up their tipsters) is having personal problems with his exwife? How is that important?
Or are you still shooting the messenger?
“Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to go to the police or FBI?”
Please explain why this would be a criminal matter as opposed to a civil matter. Show me the law which makes this criminal. If it is criminal, why isn’t the representative from Ohio who JUST got hacked calling the police?
Could be. More likely they were just keeping an eye on his tweets, and pounced the moment he made a mistake. Either way, he was misusing his official account to play sex games with his groupies. The victim here? Taxpayers.
“Please explain why this would be a criminal matter as opposed to a civil matter. ”
Likewise, show me how this isn’t. He claims he was hacked. That’s a crime. He backpedaled to say it was a prank. If so, what did he learn that made him change terms? Anything? If he knows it’s a prank, what is there left for him to investigate privately? Why does he believe that private investigators would be better than federal ones even in a civil case? Does anyone know whether this is criminal or civil until law enforcement has investigated?
“If it is criminal, why isn’t the representative from Ohio who JUST got hacked calling the police?”
Nobody else is doing it, so why should Weiner? When Weiner uses this as his defense, I might take it seriously. Weiner has to give an explanation for his own actions, just like the “representative from Ohio” does.
You’re a US Rep, and you believe your official taxpayer funded twitter account has been hacked, phished or spoofed. Do you:
A) Report it immediately to the proper authorities so they can investigate, find the culprit, and plug the security hole
B) Delete all evidence, accuse the people who exposed the problem of creating it, hire a lawyer and/or private security firm, lie to the media, and refuse to answer simple, direct questions about the matter?
B is not the reaction of an injured person — unless that injured person has something very big to hide indeed. And frankly, that dic-pic alone just doesn’t seem big enough (tongue firmly in cheek) to justify his behavior. If he had just fessed up it was his dic-pic (maybe meant for his wife? and oopsy?) and taken his lumps early on, then this whole thing would probably have blown over by now.
“Likewise, show me how this isn’t. He claims he was hacked. That’s a crime. He backpedaled to say it was a prank. If so, what did he learn that made him change terms? Anything? If he knows it’s a prank, what is there left for him to investigate privately? Why does he believe that private investigators would be better than federal ones even in a civil case? Does anyone know whether this is criminal or civil until law enforcement has investigated?”
Here’s a good explanation of why from Smoking Gun:
I work in IT security: there is no reason to call in the FBI just yet. A trained computer forensics expert can come in and pull any and all necessary data to see if the hack warrants a call to the FBI. I’m really tired of seeing the meme that Weiner must be guilty of something since he hasn’t called in the Feebies. It’s not to that point. What we know is that he has contacted an attorney who has contacted an expert. When that expert does his analysis, then we see if it gets turned over to the FBI. Our team does this all the time: sometimes we turn it over to law enforcement and sometimes it’s considered a private matter reserved for civil court.
notyouagain- the problem is nobody really expects a team hired by Weiner to announce that Weiner did, in fact, post the picture and accidentally publicly tweet it.
Now, Weiner could easily call Twitter and yFrog and ask if there was unusual activity on his verified account. If he has done so, he has not announced the answer.
notyouagain: in this situation, that would work IF Weiner had contacted campus security right away and they had started that process or advised him to. In which case, he could just say that’s what’s happening. Instead he seems bent on avoiding ANY official investigation, and all his dancing around the issue is making him look really guilty of something.
“Here’s a good explanation of why from Smoking Gun…”
I think that’s a reasonable justification for a corporation or a private citizen. Weiner is a US congressman. I expect him to treat the hack/prank like an affront to his position.
I don’t think “Weiner must be guilty,” as TSG suggests. I would rather learn that Weiner has been fully devoted to his wife and not been an online creep. Weiner himself is making this difficult for me to believe by avoiding giving straight answers.
Another possibility (fanciful but possible) The congressman AND his wife like to send sexy pictures of girls or she is voyeur/participant in his convo’s with pretty young girls. If this seems very bad manners to contemplate, I’m sorry. There are those rumors, however, that she is a lesbian/bisexual.
I have a twitter Ap on my iphone with accts of hubby and myself set up with ability to toggle betweent them. I have posted as my husband by accident before. The point being that a playful person could snap a pic and send it by mistake to the wrong account.
Lee,
One problem with the hypothesis. Using a phone to upload or post is tracked the same as a computer. Which means that the upload/post can be tracked through the service provider in either case. Oh and BTW, @PatriotUSA76/Dan Wolfe has already said he would cooperate with any formal investigation to prove it did not originate from him.
Better hypothesis would be either Anthony posted it and then realized that it was public so he deleted it (Occam’s Razor) or Huma was tired of his philandering and posted it. Either of these explain why Anthony would not want a formal investigation.
As a long time bachelor Weiner was pretty well known as a pushy and not -too- terribly- discriminating -in- women playa in both NYC and Washington. He’s been married less than a year. His past reputation makes present associations and interactions with busty young women over the internet not that hard to believe.
“Weiner was pretty well known as a pushy and not -too- terribly- discriminating -in- women playa in both NYC and Washington”
And you know this how?
Not you–why don’t you check out those new fangled search engines they’ve got here on the internets. You may be surprised what is there going back a number of years. Here’s just one article about Weiner’s modus operandi in his playboy past to get you started, sweetie.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-31/anthony-weiner-twitter-hack-and-his-playboy-past/?cid=bsa:mostpopular3
“I work in IT security: there is no reason to call in the FBI just yet. A trained computer forensics expert can come in and pull any and all necessary data to see if the hack warrants a call to the FBI.”
Fake comment. All this expert could do is see if Weiner’s personal comm devices were tampered/accessed. Wiener says he was “hacked.” So, an “expert” can go to Twitter and say “gimme the addresses” of people not his client? Ha, ha. Joke.
Occam’s Razor, folks. Weiner is a creep (anyone shocked by that?) and sent a pic via Twitter rather than his intended DM. Close the books. The cover up is the story. Schadenfreude reigns. Halleluia.
Simpler explanations:
How the photo got into Weiner’s Twit Stream — Weiner uploaded it.
Weiner’s claim he didn’t send the photo — Weiner’s lying.
Weiner’s refusal to say the photo wasn’t him — It’s him.
Some bizarre behavior I’ve witnessed from @PatriotUSA76 — ??? Need details. Could be he’s afraid of retaliation for exposing this creep.
@PatriotUSA76 saying repeatedly that anyone could look at their computer — He’s clean.
The EXIF on the photo not matching — Weiner edited (resized, cropped) the photo.
Weiner’s claim today “Pictures can be manipulated. Pictures can be dropped in and inserted.” — Smoke. He does not claim *his* picture was “dropped in or inserted”.
Weiner statements that he had not called police to investigate the matter — Weiner is avoiding lying to police.
Gennette’s claim not to be involved — Her part is a passive role anyway.
starboardhelm: Weiner may have sent the picture, although I think it’s a minor point either way. If he sent it, maybe he sent it to the wrong person. If he didn’t send it, maybe it was a hack or a prank, etc. I’m willing to accept Weiner’s denial about sending it because he has confirmed or denied so little else, and because it doesn’t matter a whole lot if he’s lying.
I think the EXIF is a red herring. A different device would have different info. Editing the photo to crop it may have altered the info as well.
Agreed on the rest. I think that GC may have panicked or have received advice to do certain things, which drew more attention to her. Whatever the case, she’s not a big part of this. Same goes for #thats545inseattleithink, which was never scrubbed by Weiner. I assume it was for her as a fan who likes watching him on TV, but that’s nothing.
The heat went from GC to Patriot, and I’m starting to think that’s a dead-end as well.
I think Lee and others seriously f-d up by publishing DMs and private e-mails with Patriot. That’s pretty shitty.
Lee,
Please dont take this the wrong way, but having wrote–
“@PatriotUSA76 –a person that we actually know almost nothing about, by the way. For example, I don’t know for sure that their name is Dan Wolfe or even their gender. ”
— then why in the world would Breitbart trust him as a source?
“— then why in the world would Breitbart trust him as a source?”
While he was the “source”, everything he gave to Breitbart was verifiable… he wasn’t the only one who saw the photo or even took a screenshot of it(there is an iphone screenshot around). The tweet is archived on tweetcongress.org…. etc…
Here’s a theory — how do we know Huma wasn’t the one? She’s been very mum. Weiner would have a good reason to protect her and call it a “prank.”
So she looks at his twitter account on his phone. She sees the DMs back and forth. They start fighting. He misses the hockey game (hence the “ha ha” TiVo comment.) She says something along the lines, “let’s just give this b– what she wants,” snaps a photo and uploads it. Tony says, “WTF are you doing!?!?”, grabs the phone, sees what she’s sent, and then immediately deletes it, hoping no one saw the impulse tweet.
It’s pretty Hollywood and I have nothing to back it up, but it’s a fun story.
Maybe she’s jealous of the attention he gives to hockey instead of her! Maybe she sabotaged the TiVo. In a fit of rage, he threatens to send a photo of his junk to a groupie. He says, “I’ll do it! I’m taking my pants off! I’m holding a camera to my junk!” But then he accidentally does it, begs Huma’s forgiveness, then cleans up the evidence as best as possible. Then goes back to watching hockey.
I think your story is more plausible, Phelps.
What if he wasn’t hacked specifically.
What if someone broke into his house and found him having a wet dream in his undies. They snap a picture of Mr. Happy with his BB and quietly upload it to yfrog. They can do this because all of his devices have his passwords stored in their memory. Then he finds the first bimbo that’s following him and sends the Mr. Happy pic. Unfortunately while sneaking back out this ninja tweeter knocked over a lamp and woke Weiner from his wet dream. Weiner being an incredibly smart guy instantly deduces what has happened and deletes the ninja tweet.
Anthony isn’t confirming or denying because it’s the best picture he’s ever seen of Mr. Happy and he doesn’t really mind it being out there. That much seems to be pretty clear. That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it. Although in the “what if” game every answer is the right answer. The only thing that hold anyone back in this game is a lack of imagination.
Oh, I know. That’s not his junk, that’s his secret boyfriend’s junk. That’s Barney Frank’s junk.
I think he and his wife Huma were goofing around. He or She took a pic of Mr. Happy and it was on their personal computer. Recently, she and Rep. Wiener had an argument and Huma,who has the password, sent the pic of Mr. Happy to one of the young girls Rep. Wiener follows because she was upset and jealous for some reason. That would explain how Rep Wiener knew it was there to quickly delete it. This would explain the prank aspect of what Rep Wiener is claiming as well as why he claims there’s no need to investigate further. He’s trying to keep their personal life out of the media.
one point about “Someone should talk about coincidence of why Weiner was right there to delete tweet. That’s a big coincidence too.”
No. I have a couple of twitter accounts and they are wired up to my phones. In certain times of day I am quite tuned into those accounts. And…I’ve had many of my social media accounts hacked at times when those companies were vulnerable. Being smarter than the average bear, I know that nothing was compromised and quickly regained control of the accounts.
When you add to the mix that this is funneled through scumbag Brietbart’s rag, it doesn’t take long to see the snake in the grass. This was the same game played a couple of years back where Freepers were salivating over a photo of “Kenyan Dress” and Barack Obama. Yet, nobody noticed that the first reference in that time period to the photo was days before in a freeper post where they sought to get it to Matt Drudge. When it broke through the news as a “clinton campaign circulates photo to smear Obama” meme…freepers involved were pissed. Did the media catch that? Nope. Because CNN doesn’t know who the Free Republic is.
It will be nice to see how long Brietbart and this twit with severe legal problems patriot76fool can tread water. And FoxNews and Chris Matthews won’t rescind their previous comments of guilt
Seriously. What is the aversion to Occam’s Razor that people dealing with politicians’ misdeeds seem to have?
All other things being equal, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex ones, friends.
What we know is that there’s an inappropriate photo that was in Wiener’s stream, directed at a 21 year old co-ed, that was outed by a non-identified person who seems to object to Wiener and watches his stream closely.
Keep theories down to the ones that don’t involve herculean leaps of logic until you have reason to make them more complex. We don’t know if Wiener sent it or someone else. We can pretty much say that his refusal to deny that it’s his, the picture is of his crotch. He’s had some questionable but not obviously-inappropriate contact with young girls on Twitter. At this point, it would appear that he needs to realize that putting pictures of your crotch anywhere on the Internet means you can expect the rest of the Internet to see it – and as a congresscritter? No following or engaging young women on Twitter is a good policy for him to adopt.