SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — Huma Abedin, a top aide to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, announced Monday that she is separating from her husband, disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
Her announcement comes on the heels of the latest allegations of Weiner sending lewd messages to another woman online which were revealed by The New York Post last night.
After long and painful consideration and work on my marriage, I have made the decision to separate from my husband. Anthony and I remain devoted to doing what is best for our son, who is the light of our life. During this difficult time, I ask for respect for our privacy,” Abedin said in a statement released Monday.
Abedin and Weiner married in 2010 when he was a Democratic congressman representing Queens, New York. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton officiated at their wedding. According to a report from ABC News, the two have been separated from each other for some time, but have continued to live together.
Reporters on the campaign trail have noticed that in recent months that Abedin has not been wearing a wedding ring, but in May, she did appear alongside Weiner at the Met Gala.
In June 2011, Weiner resigned from Congress a month after an explicit photo was released of him that he had posted on his Twitter account. At that time, Abedin was pregnant with their first child. Despite the scandal and his resignation from Congress, Weiner decided to make a bid at running for mayor of New York City in 2013.
A similar sexting scandal erupted during his mayoral campaign, the notoriously private Abedin spoke at a press conference defending her decision to stay in the marriage.
“Our marriage, like many others has had its ups and its downs. It took a lot of work and a whole lot of therapy to get to a place where I could forgive Anthony,” she said at the July 2013 press conference.
“It was not an easy choice in any way, but I made the decision that it was worth staying in this marriage. That was a decision I made for me, for our son, and for our family,” she said at the time.
Abedin herself has come under scrutiny as part of the probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and allegations that donors to the Clinton Foundation were granted access at the State Department during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has called Weiner a “pervert weirdo” and “sicko” in the past, weighed in on the split and praised Abedin’s decision.
“Huma is making a very wise decision. I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him,” Trump said in a statement released Monday.
“I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information. Who knows what he learned and who he told? It’s just another example of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment. It is possible that our country and its security have been greatly compromised by this,” he said in the statement.
