Federal prosecutors and New York police are investigating former U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner
following a media report that he engaged in sexually-explicit cellphone
and online messages with a 15-year-old girl, officials said on
Thursday.
The probes came after DailyMail.com,
the online version of a British newspaper, on Wednesday published an
interview with the unnamed girl, who described months of online and text
exchanges with Weiner in which she said he asked her to undress and
touch herself.
Weiner, 52, did not respond to
requests for comment. He told the Associated Press on Wednesday that he
had "likely been the subject of a hoax."
A New York Police Department spokesman said the police are "looking into the allegations and are investigating."
The office of U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose in Charlotte is "reviewing all materials relevant to the matter," spokeswoman Lia Bantavani said.
Manhattan
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and the FBI are also investigating,
according to a law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity.
The investigations mark the latest in a
series of scandals involving Weiner, a Democrat who represented a New
York City district in Congress but resigned in 2011.
Last month, Weiner's wife, Huma Abedin,
one of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's top aides,
said she was separating from her husband following another scandal.
Her
announcement followed a New York Post report that Weiner had sent lewd
photos of his bulging underwear -- one while he was in bed with their
toddler son -- via Twitter to another woman.
His
resignation in 2011 came in the wake of a scandal that arose from him
accidentally posting a close-up of his underpants on Twitter.
Weiner
denied for more than a week that he had sent the photo and intended it
for a young woman, claiming instead that his Twitter account had been
hacked.
After several women came forward to say
they too had shared sexually charged exchanges with the married
congressman, Weiner admitted he lied.
When Weiner
later made an unsuccessful run for New York City mayor, explicit photos
surfaced in July 2013 that he had sent under the pseudonym "Carlos
Danger" to a young woman in Indiana.
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