Anthony Weiner back in hot water amid fresh allegations of lewd online messages

WASHINGTON – Anthony Weiner was back in the scandal spotlight on Tuesday amid fresh allegations of lewd online messages sent to a 22-year-old woman.

The onetime congressman who’s now running for New York City mayor says the messages were sent prior to his resignation from Congress in 2011.

His accuser says their correspondence, consisting of explicit online chats and photo exchanges, took place only a year ago, after Weiner dropped out of the public eye, ostensibly to make amends to his wife, longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The exchanges were published on the gossip site TheDirty.com.

“I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have,” Weiner said in a statement released prior to a news conference slated for later Tuesday.

“As I have said in the past, these things that I did were wrong and hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress …. This behaviour is behind me. I’ve apologized to Huma and am grateful that she has worked through these issues with me and for her forgiveness.”

He added he and Abedin “are focused on moving forward.”