Huma Abedin, a former top aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the ex-wife of disgraced U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), claims in a new book that she was sexually assaulted once by a U.S. senator that afterward, she wound up apologizing to him because she was so shaken.
Abedin does not name the alleged offender but notes in her forthcoming book, “Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds,” she was working as an aide to Clinton, who was a U.S. senator from New York at the time, more than 10 years ago, The Guardian reported after obtaining an early copy of the tome.
The description of the assault came after Abedin wrote about attending the wedding of Donald Trump to Melania with the Clintons in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2005. Abedin, who grew up in Saudi Arabia after being born in Michigan, described the event this way: “I felt I was at an Arab wedding back home.”
She then wrote that the sexual assault took place after dinner in Washington, D.C., that was attended by “a few senators and their aides,” though Hillary Clinton was not in attendance.
“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,” Abedin writes. “Once inside, he told me to make myself comfortable on the couch.”
Abedin then writes that the senator took off his jacket and made coffee as they continued chatting.
“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,” she wrote.
“I was so utterly shocked, I pushed him away. All I wanted was for the last 10 seconds to be erased.”
She then said that the senator himself appeared to be surprised as well, telling her he “misread” her “all this time.” She writes that as she was mulling over how to leave his office “without this ending badly,” the senator asked if she wanted to stick around.
“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,” the book says.
The former Clinton aide said that she kept her distance from the senator “for a few days” after the incident but then ran into him on Capitol Hill, writing that she nodded ‘yes’ when he asked her if they could still be friends. At that point, she writes that Clinton joined them “as if she knew I needed rescuing even though I’d told her nothing about that night.”
She wrote that she remained friendly with the senator and “buried the incident” soon afterward, successfully putting it out of her mind “entirely.” But then she writes that in late 2018, then-President Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court and that Prof. Christine Blasey Ford went on to accuse the nominee of sexually assaulting her at a party when they were young, a charge which Kavanaugh denied and which a subsequent FBI probe found no evidence to support.
“Abedin’s memory of her experience on the unnamed senator’s couch, she writes, was triggered when she read about Christine Blasey Ford ‘being accused of “conveniently” remembering’ her alleged assault,” The Guardian added.
Jon has over 30 years' worth of reporting experience, as well as an author and U.S. Army veteran. He has a BA in political science from Ashford University and an MA in national security studies/intelligence analysis from American Military University.
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