Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin has such a close relationship with her boss that some Clinton State Department officials speculated at the time that it drove Abedin’s husband, Anthony Weiner, into his 2011 sexting scandal, Vanity Fair reports in a new feature.
In 2011, Weiner accidentally tweeted a sexual photograph intended for a 21-year-old woman in Seattle. Vanity Fair revealed that some Clinton State Department officials believed one reason for Weiner’s explicit messages might have been Abedin’s devotion to her work, which forced Weiner into engaging with other women.
Vanity Fair writes:
One longtime State Department official says that inside Foggy Bottom some people’s initial reaction was that Abedin might have driven Weiner to sexting because she "was never around. She gave so much to Hillary Clinton, what did she have left for him? It was politically incorrect, but we did wonder."
Abedin is referred to as a "second daughter" to the Clintons and "the third rail" of the Clinton political world in William Cohan's piece. One of Clinton’s advisers, Mandy Grunwald, said that Abedin is "always thinking three steps ahead of Hillary" and that she was "not sure Hillary could walk out the door without Huma."
Vanity Fair concludes that the Abedin-Clinton relationship might trump the relationship that each woman has with her spouse. "It’s safe to say that over the years Abedin and Hillary have spent more time together than either has with her husband," Cohan writes.
Even though Clinton State Department officials initially appeared to excuse Weiner’s explicit messages because of Abedin’s aggressive work ethic, Hillary Clinton continues to pride herself on her fervor for woman’s rights issues such as equal pay.
"It’s a good thing we women aren’t afraid of hard work, because we have some hard work to do," she once wrote.