Huma Abedin announces separation from Anthony Weiner after reports of new sexting scandal

On Monday morning, Huma Abedin announced she and husband Anthony Weiner would be separating after a new series of sexually explicit Twitter messages sent by Weiner were reported by the New York Post on Sunday evening.

In 2011, then-New York congressman Anthony Weiner resigned his House seat in disgrace when it was discovered he’d been exchanging in lewd messages with female fans over Twitter. In 2013, Weiner’s resurgent New York City mayoral bid was torpedoed by yet another sexting scandal, which was captured on camera in an eponymous 2016 documentary.

Now, Weiner has deleted his (second) Twitter account, seemingly in response to reports that he has, once again, been up to his old tricks—this time exchanging thirsty DMs with an anonymous woman described by the New York Post as a “self-avowed supporter of Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association.” Weiner even apparently sent the woman a picture of himself while his toddler son was next to him in his bed.

According to the Post, this latest cyber-dalliance began in 2015, and lasted through August 2016. The woman in question, who provided a screen shots of her flirtatious messages with the former congressman, told the paper that she and Weiner had never met in person, despite his invitation to treat her to dinner at a restaurant owned by his brother, Jason. Weiner admitted to knowing the woman, telling the Post that the two “have been friends for some time.”

At this point, the arc of Weiner’s protracted fall from grace has moved decisively from “political scandal” to something much less salacious: a seeming addiction, no less deserving of treatment—and empathy—than that of someone battling alcoholism or drug abuse.

Getting off Twitter, the platform upon which his misdeeds have so often taken place, is a good start. The question then becomes: What happens next?