Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide, says she had to go to great lengths ― and to prison ― to help her son have a good relationship with his dad, her ex-husband Anthony Weiner.
The former congressman was sentenced in September 2017 to 21 months in federal prison for sending sexually explicit text messages to a 15-year-old girl.
Abedin told The Wall Street Journal that her son, Jordan, was 7 at the time of the sentencing, and that she was filled with “so much anger and resentment” toward her former husband.
As a result, Abedin dealt with the “shame upon shame” she felt by “taking my son on adventures to distract him,” instead of visits to the prison where Weiner was incarcerated.
One of those adventures was a Christmas trip to Hawaii where she and her son ran into another family with a child about Jordan’s age.
“It’s the end of a very long night. We go to dinner with his family, and the boy stands up and puts his hands up towards his father so his daddy picks him up,” she said. “My little boy looks at this scene and breaks down and says, ‘I want my daddy, I want my daddy!’”
Abedin said a light bulb went on in her head at that moment.
“That was the day I decided I would not be ashamed about where my son would have to go to see his father,” she told the Journal. “I took him to see his dad [in prison], and he was giddy and was so excited.”
Abedin published a memoir last year in which she described the “bolt of lightning” moment when Weiner confessed one of his transgressions to her.
Weiner served in Congress as a Democrat from New York for 12 years, until his resignation in 2011. He was released from prison in 2019, at which time he and Abedin “made a decision that there were going to be no secrets in this family.” At the time, Weiner told reporters that he hoped “to be able to live a life of integrity and service.”
Now that their son is older, Abedin says she and Weiner are trying to “always be sources of truth for him, that we wanted him to learn from us before learning something on social media or through his friends.”
As a result, Abedin says, her relationship with Weiner is better than it was after their divorce.
“He was my best friend before we became anything else, and we will always have this connection because we’ll always be a family,” she said.
But while they are a family, Abedin has a new man in her life: Bradley Cooper, whom she has been dating since summer, according to E! Online.
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