Huma Abedin has claimed in her forthcoming memoir that she was sexually assaulted by an unnamed US senator.
The longtime Hillary Clinton aide and estranged wife of former congressman and convicted sex offender Anthony Weiner wrote in her new book ‘Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds,’ out next week, that she was able to put the incident out of her mind for years.
It was not until Christine Blasey Ford was testifying about her alleged assault by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 that the memory resurfaced.
She did not name the senator or his political party.
Abedin wrote about a Washington dinner, sometime after Donald Trump‘s wedding to Melania in 2005, before she was with Weiner. She and Weiner married in July 2010.
Abedin wrote that she attended the dinner without Clinton, then-senator from New York, with ‘a few senators and their aides,’ according to a copy of the book obtained by The Guardian.
Huma Abedin is seen with Hillary Clinton in May 2005 – around the time that she was sexually assaulted by a senator
‘I ended up walking out with one of the senators, and soon we stopped in front of his building and he invited me in for coffee. Once inside, he told me to make myself comfortable on the couch.’
She said the senator took off his blazer, rolled up his sleeves and made coffee before sitting beside her on the couch.
‘Then, in an instant, it all changed. He plopped down to my right, put his left arm around my shoulder, and kissed me, pushing his tongue into my mouth, pressing me back on the sofa.
‘I was so utterly shocked, I pushed him away. All I wanted was for the last 10 seconds to be erased.’
She said that the senator seemed shocked but apologized and said he had ‘misread’ their relationship.
Abedin said she then plotted how to leave ‘without this ending badly,’ as the senator asked her if she wanted to stay.
‘Then I said something only the twentysomething version of me would have come up with – ‘I am so sorry’ – and walked out, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible.’
Abedin, now 45, said that she kept her distance from the senator ‘for a few days,’ but eventually ran into him on Capitol Hill.
He asked her at the time if they were still friends, and she nodded. She wrote that Clinton then came up to join them.
Huma Abedin attends the 2021 Met Gala on September 13
The Clinton aide said that the memory of the couch incident was suppressed until she read about Ford ‘being accused of ‘conveniently’ remembering’ her alleged assault.
Ford claimed Kavanaugh assaulted her at a gathering in high school, Kavanaugh claimed such an incident never happened and was still confirmed to the bench.
Abedin’s estranged husband has had his own repeated sex scandals, one of which involved sexting with a 15-year-old girl – messages which were exclusively revealed by DailyMail.com in 2016, leading to his arrest.
Weiner, 56, served 18 months in federal prison for the offense, and he and Abedin separated that same year after the offense.
Weiner and Abedin married back in 2010, in a star-studded ceremony at a Long Island mansion, officiated by President Bill Clinton, and during which Hillary Clinton called the bride the closest thing she had to a second daughter.
But the couple’s high-powered political union hit troubled waters the following year.
Weiner stepped down from his seat in New York’s 9th congressional district in 2011, after he accidentally tweeted a crotch-shot of himself in his underwear to the public, on his official page.
Abedin gave birth to Weiner’s son that same year.
He attempted to revive his political career two years later in a 2013 run for New York mayor. He surged to first place in the polls before his campaign suffered a spectacular blow when a second sexting scandal surfaced.
Weiner, still with Abedin at the time, was found to be exchanging lewd messages online under the alias ‘Carlos Danger’.
But the successive scandals were eclipsed four years later in 2017, when Weiner admitted to sexting with a 15-year-old girl, following a DailyMail.com investigation.
For months, Weiner and the minor exchanged sexually graphic text messages, spoke over several social media platforms and he sent her photographs of himself in various states of undress, sometimes posing with his son.
After DailyMail.com exposed Weiner, he admitted to knowing that the victim, from North Carolina, was underage at the time of their exchanges.
Weiner was arrested by FBI agents in May that year.
He admitted one count of transmission of obscene material later that month, weeping in court as he entered his guilty plea.
‘I have a sickness but I do not have an excuse,’ he said, after the judge told him that he would have to register as a sex offender.
He was then sentenced to 21 months in prison that September, but was let out three months early on good behavior.