Two days ago, award-winning journalist Peter Elkind reported for The New Yorker and ProPublica, that Leathers told him "that the teen-ager wanted to go public, but [she] urged her to call the police instead." He added, "After it became clear that the teen-ager was determined to tell her story, Leathers said she shifted to 'damage control.'"
Elkind's story continues: "'How can I at least make you some money?' she said she asked the teen-ager. 'I basically said, ‘The only way you should do this is if they pay you.’ Certain outlets will pay you to talk, and I had made deals with a lot of them.' Leathers's agent alerted dailymail.com, the online version of a British tabloid with which she’d previously done business. Both Leathers and the girl received a sizable fee; the teen’s father, an attorney, helped negotiate her payment."
Leathers immediately began bashing Elkind on Twitter, before his story was published. She tweeted, "Everyone beware of @peterelkind, the least ethical journalist I've ever encountered. Don't trust him not to run info given off the record."
Yesterday, in a Daily Caller story called "EXCLUSIVE: Ex-Weiner Flame Furious About Lies In Media Reports," Leathers told Betsy Rothstein, "There’s a quote attributed to me that I never said to the girl, none of the stuff about deals with the Daily Mail should’ve been in there, they left out that I had my therapist contact CPS because it didn’t fit their narrative."
"The quote attributed to me about making the teen some money was fake," Leathers argues. "I never said that to her."
Rothstein tweeted about her story, "FAKE NEWS ALERT: Weiner's ex @sydneyelainexo gets screwed over by the media and spills about it." Then, Leathers tweeted,"lol @ @peterelkind, @ProPublica, & @NewYorker for thinking I wouldn't call them out on their shitty, unethical 'journalism.'"
Then, as seen in the following screenshot, Leathers began viciously bashing Elkind on Twitter, calling him "an old cunt" and "a nasty old bastard."
Elkind tweeted, "For the record: There are many falsehoods in your tweets and your claims to @DailyCaller, which I can readily prove, if necessary."
Both Rothstein and Leathers blast the New Yorker over fact-checking, but there are many facts wrong in the Daily Caller story. For instance, Leathers states, "In the past the New Yorker had identified me as a poker player from Vegas (someone from Weiner’s first scandal,) so I should’ve known they wouldn’t get their story right," but that other woman was a blackjack dealer, not a poker player. And I couldn't find any evidence that it ever even happened, unless Leathers mixed up the New Yorker with another media outlet.
Also, Rothstein reports, "In an exclusive interview with The Mirror, Leathers said she had her therapist call Child Protective Services," and adds, "It’s a fact that at least two publications — The New Yorker and ProPublica, which ran identical stories — conveniently left out in their reports on the matter." But that's not an established fact since no one seems to have fact-checked it, it's only hearsay, and Leathers gave that exclusive to the Daily Mail, not The Mirror.
Perhaps performing "damage control" for herself, Leathers also spoke to Page Six, the New York Post gossip column: "It was a pretty awful situation to be placed in the middle of. I felt a lot of pressure to help this kid I don’t even know. I didn’t know what to do other than to contact [child-protective services], and when that failed, I felt pretty helpless."
After bragging that she helped get the teen's story out there, Leathers isn't being very clear, consistent or honest about what exactly she did do, when she allegedly - in her own words - inadvertently helped Trump defeat Clinton. Since Leathers now claims, "in reality, I did all I could to help this kid without getting press involved," and "that was the last thing I wanted."
(5/2/17 update: In an extremely explicit July 2014 Adult DVD Talk interview about her porn work, Sydney Leathers complained that after she tipped off a gossip blog in July of 2013 about her sexting with former Congressman Anthony Weiner - when he was running for Mayor of NYC - that the political website Buzzfeed actually "outed" her and she feared "it would ruin [her] life."
"The owner of the blog actually did protect my anonymity and didn’t tell who I us but it was another website, Buzzfeed, that outed my identity and linked me to Anthony," Leathers said. "In the beginning, I was getting ready to go back to school and, in my mind, I was thinking about school and I didn’t want my name or face associated with it because I thought it would ruin my life. I really didn’t want to be a part of it and I guess I was a little naïve that I could do that anonymously and not be outed."
As noted in the last update, the alleged teen sexter that Sydney Leathers takes credit for "helping to get her story out there," attacked the media for trying to out her in an exclusive interview with Buzzfeed.
On May 28, 2011, Ben Smith shared a byline with Jonathan Allen at Politico to report, "Rep. Anthony Weiner says social networking identity hacking is to blame for the lewd material that a conservative news website reported was sent from his Twitter and yfrog handles to an unidentified woman in Seattle." The article also noted, "Weiner’s office — generally one of the most press friendly around — did not respond to a request for comment on whether he has contacted federal authorities to report the alleged cyber-attack, which could fall under laws prohibiting cyberhacking and impersonating federal officials."
The next day, Ben Smith applauded a statement released by Gennette Nicole Cordova - the "unidentified woman in Seattle" who actually used everything but her last name in the handle Weiner tweeted - for its "comprehensiveness and force that make it quite effective", and lamented that she had been "dragged into a new-media maelstrom." Cordova complained that her "life has been seriously impacted by speculation and faulty allegations," and that her "reputation has been called into question by those who lack the character to report the facts."
Even though Cordova used her name as a byline in the statement published by the New York Daily News, Smith left her name out of his column and referred to her as the "addressee of the lewd tweet from Anthony Weiner's account." Smith also appeared to be suggesting that Weiner could have been hacked, which turned into a mostly partisan debate, at the time, before Weiner even admitted sending the underwear pic to Cordova.
Seven months later, Ben Smith became editor in chief at Buzzfeed, the New York Times reported.)
(4/26/17 update: Buzzfeed's David Mack is reportedly the only other journalist who has met the Gaston County, North Carolina teen who allegedly sexted with former Congressman Anthony Weiner. Among other oddities, the November 2nd, 2016 article doesn't really explain why this exclusive doesn't break the nondisclosure agreement her father told other journalists the family signed with The Daily Mail; why it would possibly matter if FBI agents interviewed the teen before or after Comey's letter; and why she would speak to Mack, instead of whatever other REPORTER she claims called her on October 28th.
Mack doesn't seem to have scored many exclusives in his Buzzfeed reporting, but an article he wrote in August of 2015, takes place in the same county - perhaps, the same town - and also involves a family that didn't want it's name released; "undue" social media attention; hoax claims; photos and video of a tall, skinny girl; plus, the lack of a local police department investigation.
The biggest mystery surrounding this teenage girl and her father still probably remains why Clinton supporters would give their exclusive to the sketchy conservative UK tabloid Daily Mail, in the first place. Especially since Daily Mail reporter Alana Goodman has a long history of anti-Clinton reporting, which includes a hit piece that names 20 "possible victims of a vast Clinton conspiracy", and asks "WHO ELSE IS ON THE CLINTON DEATH LIST?")
(4/17/17 update: On August 30, 2016, I reported for The Daily Caller: "A New York Times article about the latest sexting scandal involving disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner was mysteriously scrubbed late Monday night, removing a quote from the city agency that probes suspected child abuse or neglect. Another quote from a NYC professor noting 'investigations rarely are done on the privileged side of town' was also removed."
According to NewsDiffs, on August 29, 2016 at 3:29 PM EDT, the following line was also stricken from the article credited to Amy C. Chozick and Patrick Healy: "Campaign officials had braced for fresh revelations about Mr. Weiner after the Post reported earlier this month that a Republican had baited Mr. Weiner into a sexual online chat."
As noted below, last month, Alana Goodman reported for the Daily Mail: "We were first alerted in early August that Anthony Weiner, whose sexting history was well known, had been sexting which was said to be an unnamed woman. While working on this investigation, the New York Post revealed on August 29 his sexting relationship with a 40-something divorcee. On the day of that revelation, a source disclosed to DailyMail.com that the woman in the relationship DailyMail.com was investigating was a different person to the one revealed by the New York Post."
"On August 30 Huma Abedin announced her separation from Weiner, and that day a source told DailyMail.com the woman we were investigating was in fact an underage girl," Goodman added.)
In three different years, former New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner was hit with reports that he had been sexting younger women, while married to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's longtime aide, Huma Abedin. Even before he accidentally publicly sent his infamous underwear tweet to a Seattle student in May of 2011, Breitbart News had already been alerted by a still unknown source that Weiner was sexting. The story behind how these related events were reported, and or leaked, has a few twists and turns, and may prove to be bumpy for some of its travelers, depending on exactly what federal agents are looking at in multiple probes.
"But no one could have guessed that Sydney Leathers and Anthony Weiner would come back to haunt the 2016 presidential election," former award-winning adult film actress Aurora Snow reported for the Daily Beast on November 19, 2016. That was three years after Leathers - like every single other sexter or female in the spotlight after Weinergate - had bizarre dealings with the media, and the strange way that the FBI has handled events since then.
(Editor's Note: I certainly did predict Anthony Weiner would haunt the 2016 presidential election, and I've been probing hackers, feds, security firms, sketchy journos, fake news, Russia propaganda, WikiLeaks, Trump, Clintons and related political dirty tricks since June of 2011, when I first started getting harassed reporting on Weinergate. The original name for this blog was "Hackers and Fake News", when I launched it in July of 2011.)
Snow added, "Leathers played a pivotal role in orchestrating the shocking Daily Mail story back in September revealing how Weiner had been sexting a 15-year-old girl—a development that put the ex-politician under federal investigation and reopened the FBI inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s emails."
Last September, The NY Daily News reported the teen's father claimed that a "nondisclosure agreement [had been] reached by the family with the Daily Mail," however, it's unknown if this included a payment of some sort. The Daily Mail's Goodman has ignored multiple requests on Twitter regarding whether or not Sydney Leathers was paid for her role in "orchestrating" the scandal, which many believe may have cost Hillary Clinton some votes in the 2016 presidential election.
When asked if Leathers was paid for Snow's Daily Beast story, Aurora told me on Twitter, "worry not, in that regard she's pure 😉 there was no payment for the interview."
(4/17 Editor's Note: This article is far from finished, and the following twenty tweets that I made on April 6th at my @RonBryn twitter account will be transformed into a more readable story, as I add more updates.)
01. 7/26/16 Anthony Weiner's odd DNC exclusive: "You don't think I care about Fox 5, here's what I got for you..."
02. 7/26/16 Weiner brags he'd come out of "retirement" & beat @DonaldJTrumpJr like 'rented mule' in a NYC mayor race
Anthony Weiner and Trumps take swipes at each other
03. Without trying to inject opinion, I don't think anyone - including Weiner - realistically thinks he'd be able to run for NYC mayor again.
04. 7/26/16: @realDonaldTrump & @DonaldJTrumpJr mock Weiner who used DNC to promote himself with far-fetched scenario
Anthony Weiner and Trumps take swipes at each other
05. 8/1/16: Alleged Clinton supporter Sydney Leathers calls Weiner "delusional narcissist" in Daily Mail exclusive
EXCLUSIVE: 'He's a delusional narcissist and the only job he's qualified for is dog catcher!' Anthony Weiner's sexting partner Sydney Leathers lashes out at Huma's husband after he teases a NYC mayoral run
06. 8/11/16 Sydney Leathers falsely claims Weiner admitted he had at least 6 sexting partners including 1 that was 17
Two Thumbs Down on Weiner Doc
07. Delaware police cleared Weiner in 2011, who exchanged 5 DMs but didn't sext 17-year-old; Patterico posted hacked DMs to smear him, however (Editor's Note: I wrongly tweeted Vermont, instead of Delaware)
08. 8/11/16 Sydney Leathers claims a "woman" who was currently sexting Weiner recently reached out to her for advice.
Two Thumbs Down on Weiner Doc
09. 8/11/16 Alana Goodman @DailyMail jumps on Leathers "Weiner" review to note claim "STILL talking to cyber hookups"
'I am certain his behavior continues to this day': Anthony Weiner's sexting partner Sydney Leathers claims the disgraced politician is STILL talking to cyber hookups
10. 8/13/16 NY Post reports Weiner was catfished by "dude". He uses same exact "Nikki" that fake teen used in 2011.
Anthony Weiner caught in new flirty online chat
11. 8/28/16 NY Post reports, "Anthony Weiner sexted busty brunette while his son was in bed with him"
Anthony Weiner sexted busty brunette while his son was in bed with him
12. 3/21/17 Bashing @LouiseMensch. Alana Goodman reports, "We were 1st alerted in early August" Weiner sexting woman
EXCLUSIVE: Serious questions over credibility of former UK lawmaker who sparked claim that Obama spied on Trump after her latest conspiracy theory is revealed as a 'farrago of fantasy and nonsense'
13. 8/29/16 Source allegedly tells Daily Mail that woman it's probing is a different person than revealed by NY Post
EXCLUSIVE: Serious questions over credibility of former UK lawmaker who sparked claim that Obama spied on Trump after her latest conspiracy theory is revealed as a 'farrago of fantasy and nonsense'
14. 8/30/16 Abedin dumps Weiner. Daily Mail source allegedly says woman it's probing is "in fact an underage girl"
EXCLUSIVE: Serious questions over credibility of former UK lawmaker who sparked claim that Obama spied on Trump after her latest conspiracy theory is revealed as a 'farrago of fantasy and nonsense'
15. 9/1/16 Daily Mail conducts an on-camera interview with father and 15-year-old in hotel...before fact checking
EXCLUSIVE: Serious questions over credibility of former UK lawmaker who sparked claim that Obama spied on Trump after her latest conspiracy theory is revealed as a 'farrago of fantasy and nonsense'
16. 9/21/16 Alana Goodman breaks sensational exclusive & refers to teen as a "troubled 15-year-old girl" in headline
EXCLUSIVE: Anthony Weiner carried on a months-long online sexual relationship with a troubled 15-year-old girl telling her she made him 'hard,' asking her to dress up in 'school-girl' outfits and pressing her to engage in 'rape fantasies'
17. 9/22/16 Teen's father refers to Weiner as "monster" in Alana Goodman exclusive after Weiner claims he got hoaxed
EXCLUSIVE: 'He's a monster!' Father of 15-year-old who had an online sexting relationship with Anthony Weiner outraged after disgraced congressman discloses his daughter's identity to the media
18. 9/23/16 Alana Goodman exclusive: Leathers claims 15-year-old reached out over Facebook in May to ask for advice
EXCLUSIVE: 'There is no line for him' - Anthony Weiner's former sexting partner Sydney Leathers calls the ex-congressman 'predatory' after his explicit messages to 15-year-old girl are revealed
19. 11/19/16: @MissAuroraSnow @DailyBeast: "Leathers played pivotal role orchestrating shocking Daily Mail story"
Porn Star Sydney Leathers Opens Up: ‘I’m Sorry’ for Helping Elect Donald Trump
20. 3/16/17: After I ask questions on Twitter, Sydney Leathers suggests she only talks to reporters if she gets paid
Sydney Leathers @sydneyelainexo: I feel the same way about reporters as I do findom subs: if you're not paying me I'm not going to talk to you 🙃
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