Efforts to reach Weiner’s press office have not been returned at this time. It is likely, however, only a matter of time before we know if Weiner reported the hack to the authorities, and what officials may or may not find. Of course, if Weiner does not report this security breach to authorities,
If this was in fact a hack, as Weiner claims, then it’s not unreasonable that the alleged hacker would do everything that he or she could do to make the individual look guilty, including retweeting the offending image, and then deleting it. Rep. Weiner is not just a progressive provocateur who has very few fans on the right, but he is also a very public figure with 45,000 Twitter followers. So it is perfectly reasonable to wonder why it would appear that his offending tweet was only retweeted once, by a Twitter user who goes by the handle @patriotusa76:
So who is this Twitter user that appeared to luck out and sent the only unique RT of Weiner’s image? The Twitter profile claims that he is an individual named Dan Wolfe, and his bio reads: “Conservative Reagan Republican. No Obamacare, socialism, sharia. Proud of the USA & Proud to be an American with NO apologies. No elitists need apply.”
Its not an exaggeration to say that Wolfe is somewhat obsessed with Weiner; a simple search reveals that, since April, he has mentioned Rep. Weiner 287 times via twitter. Also, skeptics might see that Wolfe and his Twitter clique have been building a narrative about Rep. Weiner’s followers for months, perhaps best evidenced by this tweet to an underage high school girl, who requested a follow from Weiner and got it:
So, a guy who has been building exactly this narrative for months turns out to be the one and only unique retweet of the picture in question? Just as Rep. Weiner’s cryptic hashtag about the Seattle time zone is reason to raise reasonable flag of suspicion, so too is this. Lest anyone think that Wolfe is somehow in cahoots with the Big Government report (and/or vice versa) Breitbart claims that Wolfe has refused to speak to him then adds “if he is involved in a conspiracy, then it is a very expensive one and a remarkably long narrative for this to pay off,” adding “that defies reason.”
In their original report, Big Government reasonably used a screencap from the Congressional Twitter archive, which doesn’t show how the tweet was sent (phone/web/etc). A real-time screen capture would have that information, and might have suggested Weiner’s innocence. It is reasonable to wonder why @patriotusa76 did not do a screen capture when he retweeted it.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/rep-weiner-still-claims-twitter-account-hacked-though-big-questions-still-remain/