NEW YORK — There's one way Rep. Anthony Weiner could show that he didn't send a salacious photo to a female college student from his Twitter account: Ask law enforcement to investigate.That's really it. The rest is just partisan baloney at this point ...
The New York congressman has so far declined to ask for an investigation into the photo, saying it's not a worthy use of government resources. The U.S. Capitol Police said it would not launch an investigation unless requested.
In asking a private security firm to investigate instead, Weiner won't be able to prove his innocence by obtaining logs from Twitter showing where his account was accessed from. Twitter says it requires a subpoena or court order to hand over such information. A subpoena or court order would have to be initiated by police or the FBI, not private detectives.
The scandal, which erupted last weekend, has been fueled by Weiner's initial refusal to answer questions about it. Although he started explaining his side Wednesday in a series of media interviews, some of his answers were perplexing.
Weiner was clear about one thing: He says he didn't send the picture, which was addressed to one of his Twitter followers, identified by news outlets as Genette Cordova.
If he didn't send it, that points to someone else using his account at Twitter or at yFrog, the photo-sharing site that stored the picture, according to conservative website BigGovernment.com, which first reported on the tweet.
Sites such as Twitter usually keep logs of which Internet addresses are used to access an account, sort of like an online guestbook. It doesn't contain names, but these numerical Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses identify computers and phones.
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