WASHINGTON — Rep. Anthony Weiner canceled a scheduled speech in Wisconsin Friday in the wake of the media storm over a lewd photo that appeared on his Twitter account, according to a new report.
Weiner was due to speak at the Wisconsin Democratic Convention in Milwaukee Friday night, but state Democratic party spokesman Graeme Zielinski said the lawmaker had canceled, instead opting to stay in New York “with his family.”
“It’s understandable, considering what’s going on,” Zielinski told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Weiner, 46, an outspoken liberal member of Congress, has denied sending a close-up shot of a man’s bulging gray briefs to a 21-year-old woman from Seattle that he follows on Twitter.
However, he has so far refused to deny that he was the person in the picture.
“You know, I can’t say with certitude. My system was hacked. Pictures can be manipulated. Pictures can be dropped in and inserted,” he said during one interview Wednesday, one of a series of round robin interviews he gave to the major broadcast and cable networks.
A day earlier during a testy Capitol Hill briefing, he lashed out at reporters pressing the issue, declining to give specific answers and even calling one CNN producer a “jackass.”
Weiner, who is believed to be eying a run for mayor in New York City in 2013, has hired private investigators to look into the matter but has so far not asked for federal law enforcement to investigate the alleged hacking.