Weiner: A History of Backfilling Bravado, Part 1

In the May-June 2011 issue of Moment Magazine, Wiener bragged: “I’m a big deal.”

And yet, when his email is “hacked” it’s no big deal and not a federal matter, even after he boasts that he was appointed to the Homeland Security Task Force after 9-11.

Its the usual bravado followed by backfilling or lying that is his stock in trade. Rep. Weiner also has a history of unethical behavior that he corrects only after publicly shamed.

Here are few examples:

• A month after fighting for a bill to up the numbers of supermodel visas in New York City, Rep. Weiner’s “campaign admitted it had mistakenly deposited illegal checks made in the names of the foreign models.” (April 4, 2009, New York Post). Weiner initally denied ever taking money from the foreign workers in the first place at a fundraising put on by an immigration lawyer. (No conflict of interest there!) But according to the Post on March 10, 2009, “Weiner’s camp insisted it hadn’t deposited the checks, but offered no explanation for why it included them in the filings.”

• After campaigning hard against U.N. bureaucrats racking up parking tickets in NYC, he racked up an impressive $2180 in parking tickets in D.C. Aides claimed the D.C. authorities sent the bill to the wrong address. (He later paid them when public scrutiny came to bear.)

• In the 2009 spending bill Weiner sponsored $18.4 million in earmarks for 22 groups and projects, over $500,000 of which went to campaign contributors.

• His “Friends of Weiner” political group was forced to pay $47,000 fine because of financial misconduct.

• After condemning the Arizona immigration law, he admitted to never having read the 16 page law.

• Finally, New York Magazine in 2009 described him as “one of Congress’s leading horndogs,” The Daily News called him a “lean, mean dating machine,” and The New York Post noted in 2008 that “[i]t seems everywhere Congressman Anthony Weiner goes, there’s a bevy of babes surrounding him.” (New York Magazine, May 11, 2009).