Anthony Weiner won't deny lewd photo is him
CBS News ^ | 06/01/2011 | Brian Montopoli, Jill Jackson
In an interview with CBS News Wednesday, New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner repeatedly refused to deny that his crotch is seen in a lewd photograph sent to a college student from his Twitter account.
Weiner did say explicitly that he did not send the photo.
"I did not, this was a prank, a hoax," he told CBS News' Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes.
He said his "system was hacked into," noting that "we've retained a firm that is going to take a look at the Internet security that to make sure this does not happen again." Weiner said the firm would try to find out "exactly what happened."
But Weiner would not say that he is not pictured in the photograph, prompting Cordes to say, "it sounds like it was a photo of you." Weiner responded, "well, we're going to try to find out exactly what happened."
Later, Cordes said, "I think any normal person could say with certainty whether a picture was a photo of them or not, whether they had taken a photo of them or not."
In response, Weiner referenced Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" segment Tuesday night in which Stewart suggested that the photo didn't look like Weiner for what Weiner called "embarrassing reasons."
At another point, the congressman said, "the photograph does not look familiar to me."
"But before I say anything I want to make sure that nothing was manipulated about it, that it wasn't taken - that something wasn't dropped into my account or taken out," he said.
"This was a hoax," he continued. "It was committed on me, it was a prank, it was relatively easy one to do, making fun of my name. My accounts were hacked in to. I think at some point we've got to start focusing on other issues."
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