Huma Abedin, a long-time aide to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, has said she is separating from her husband, former US congressman Anthony Weiner, after he was caught "sexting" again.
Photographs of the 51-year-old Democrat, who resigned from office in 2011 after sending lewd snaps of himself to women, were published in the New York Post late on Sunday, appearing to show a sexually explicit selfie of Mr Weiner's crotch taken as he lay in bed next to their toddler son.
The tabloid newspaper, which ran the photograph next to Monday’s front-page headline “Pop Goes the Weiner”, said the image was taken shortly after 3am on July 31st, 2015 when his wife was working away on the Clinton presidential campaign and was sent by the former politician to an unidentified woman with whom he had been exchanging text messages since January 2015.
The paper said that Mr Weiner has sent more than a dozen images to the woman, mostly of him posing shirtless, and that the pair were still exchanging racy texts until earlier this month.
"After long and painful consideration and work on my marriage, I have made the decision to separate from my husband," Ms Abedin said in a statement.
“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.”
Mr Weiner and his wife are the subject of a recent fly-on-the-wall documentary that chronicles his bid to resurrect his political career in the 2013 New York mayoral election.
He initially led in the polls before his campaign crumbled when it emerged that he had sent other raunchy messages to another woman after he had resigned from congress under his internet pseudonym "Carlos Danger. "
This time, when confronted with further evidence of "sexting" another women, the former New York representative admitted to having a relationship with the woman, whom the newspaper only identified as a 40-something divorced Donald Trump supporter from the west.
He told the newspaper that he and the woman “have been friends for some time”.
“Someone just climbed into my bed,” Mr Weiner allegedly texted the women before sending what the paper claims is a photograph of the former congressman appearing to look aroused, lying next to his son. The picture shows a bare-chested man wearing white boxer shorts.
“You do realise you can see you[r] Weiner in that pic??” the woman replied.
Mr Weiner apparently deleted his Twitter account after the New York Post's report.
Donald Trump, Mrs Clinton’s Republican rival in the US presidential election, seized on the latest scandal surrounding one of the Democratic candidate’s closest advisers to criticise his opponent.
“Huma is making a very wise decision. I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him,” said Mr Trump in a statement.
“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.”
