NEW YORK — A former porn actress who exchanged e-mails and messages over Twitter with U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner said Wednesday that he asked her to lie about their interactions. A growing chorus of lawmakers, meanwhile, pressed for his resignation as the scandal enveloping the congressman enters its third week.
Weiner has told friends he wanted to speak with his pregnant wife, Huma Abedin, before deciding whether to resign. She returned to Washington early Wednesday from a trip to Africa with her boss, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Nightclub dancer Ginger Lee is the latest in a series of women who said they received sexually charged messages from the seven-term congressman. The scandal began when Weiner posted a picture of his underwear-clad crotch on Twitter, then lied about it and said his account had been hacked. Weiner acknowledged last week during a teary press conference that he had sent lewd photos and messages to about six women over three years.
Lee, of Antioch, Tenn., said she and Weiner exchanged about 100 e-mails between March and June after Lee posted a supportive statement about the congressman on her blog. He then contacted her on Twitter, Lee said. They mostly talked politics, but he often would turn the discussion to sex, she said.
“I have wardrobe demands too. I need to highlight my package,” Weiner wrote Lee, in an e-mail read aloud at the news conference by Lee’s attorney, Gloria Allred.
The lawmaker, 46, who has taken a two-week leave from the House, was in treatment for an undisclosed disorder at an undisclosed location. During an interview two weeks ago, he said he had exchanged messages with Lee but didn’t elaborate.
Lee said she did not send sexually suggestive messages to Weiner. “Anytime that he would take our communications in a sexual direction, I did not reciprocate,” she said.
After the first photo surfaced, Lee asked Weiner what to do, and “he asked me to lie” about their contact, she said.
Lee said she put out a statement on the matter at his request saying she had never met him and that she supported what he stands for. But she and Weiner kept communicating about what to do, she said. Lee said she was coming forward now to tell the truth and to deny reports that she was in an online sexual relationship with him.
