Any minute now, Gloria Allred will be giving a press conference with “former porn star” and Weiner fan Ginger Lee. (Interesting that Lee is emphasizing “former.” What is she these days, a nuclear physicist?) The scoop from TMZ, which is loving this story almost as much as I am:
Yes, Ginger, now a “feature dancer,” will break her silence on the steamy tweets the Congressman sent her, as well as the email he sent after the scandal broke, which reads in part, “The key is to have a short, thought out statement that tackles the top line questions and then refer back to it … Like so many others, I follow Rep Weiner on Twitter …”
TMZ has a livestream of the presser. I’m not going to do a full-fledged liveblog, but I’ll update if anything interesting happens.
12:36 Okay, it’s starting. Allred will be taking questions, Lee won’t. Which is good, because she looks like a deer in the headlights.
12:37 Lee is no longer doing porn and is now studying to be a real estate agent. That’s probably why Weiner was interested in her.
12:38 Lee chatted with Weiner for several months, he made lewd comments, she says they were unprompted. Wait, what?
12:39 Lee asked Weiner how to handle it, but didn’t like what he told her. (Then why did she say exactly what he told her to say?)
12:40 Lee has gotten monetary offers for her story but has turned them down. Now she wants to return to her career as a “feature dancer.”
12:41 If called to testify before Congress, she plans to comply. She no longer supports Weiner.
12:42 Now Lee is speaking. “I did not sext Anthony Weiner. I did not send pictures to him.”
12:43 “When the scandal broke and people started e-mailing me, I didn’t know what to do. I asked Rep. Weiner. He asked me to lie.”
12:43 “I refused to lie.” Er, except she did lie.
12:44 “I stayed in the house, avoided cameras, and hoped the story would die down.”
12:45 She says she has lupus. Now she’s calling for Weiner to resign.
12:46 Back to Allred. “We have no comment about his wife.”
12:47 Gloria Allred just said “package.”
12:48 Reading from Weiner’s e-mails to Lee: “I have wardrobe demands too. I need to highlight my package… You aren’t giving my package due credit.”
12:49 According to Lee, she never sent or received photos.
12:50 “A feature dancer is a dancer who is… featured.”
12:51 “A fair characterization is that all in all, the e-mails were really not about sex.”
12:52 Lee just wants to get back to her life.
12:53 Allred: “I’ll just say that her view of him has evolved over time.”
12:55 Allred is talking about some sort of vague threat. A statement Weiner was going to release that Lee did not agree to.
12:57 Lee isn’t giving her real name.
12:58 Okay, that’s it. Lee isn’t giving any interviews, “because of her schedule.”
Ginger Lee and Bill Maher are both calling for Weiner to resign. So now we’ve heard from the gonorrhea lobby. Last word goes to Lincolntf on Twitter: “You know it’s bad when the porn star is the one trying to tamp down the sexuality in the communications.”
P.S. Okay, the real last word, from Greg Griffith on Facebook: “Wow – a press conference featuring a shameless whore. And Ginger Lee.”
