Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Top Obama bundler is owner of posh Park Ave. apartment now home to Huma Abedin and porn peddler Anthony Weiner

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8/13/12, "Anthony Weiner and wife move into $3.3M Manhattan apt.," NY Post, Macintosh, Gould Keil, and Margolin

"Anthony Weiner’s wife not only took him back, she took him back in style — moving with the shamed pol into a luxurious, $3.3 million Manhattan pad owned by a deep-pocketed Democratic donor, The Post has learned.

After quitting his Queens House seat amid a notorious sexting scandal, Weiner and beautiful, brainy spouse Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, landed in the sprawling, 12th-floor Park Avenue trophy residence owned by Rosen Partners LLC, which is headed by close Clinton pal Jack Rosen, records show.

Rosen — who oversees the American Jewish Congress — is an influential international political force. He’s been a guest at the White House, flies the Clintons in his private plane, and has poured money into both Bill and Hillary Clinton’s election campaigns over the years, according to campaign-finance records.

He has also contributed several thousand dollars to Weiner’s coffers, and is a top Obama bundler, donating more than $500,000 to the president’s re-election efforts.

The market-rate rent on Weiner and Abedin’s 2,120-square-foot, four-bedroom, 3.5-bathroom apartment — where the disgraced pol has said he spends his days doing laundry and changing baby son Jordan’s diapers — is at least $12,000 to $14,000 a month, real-estate sources said.

A much smaller 1,476-square-foot, two-bedroom unit on a lower floor recently rented for $10,000, records show.

Some Weiner-watchers are stunned that the pol, who gave up his $174,000 salary when he resigned, and Huma, who makes around $155,000 annually, can afford the posh pad at 254 Park Ave. South at East 20th Street.

“It’s a ridiculously expensive place,” said a top Democratic fund-raising source with deep ties to the Clintons.

Everyone assumes they live there for free, thanks to a donor, a friend of Bill and Hillary, or even just someone with an empty place who is connected,” the source said.

But Hillary Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines insisted that Weiner and Abedin pay “market rate’’ for the pad. “They are a two-income family and are more than capable of paying their market-rate rent,” he said, declining to disclose exactly what the couple pays.

Weiner hasn’t landed steady work since leaving office, according to sources. But some friends of the onetime rising star said he has consulting work and will have no problem exceeding his congressional salary.

Federal officials such as Abedin face restrictions on receiving gifts and must disclose their financial dealings to ensure that their decision-making isn’t compromised by private interests.

As one of Hillary’s key confidantes, Abedin is in a position where she could exert considerable influence on America’s top diplomat....

Weiner and Abedin’s new home, the largest in Rosen’s newly rehabbed Beaux Arts building, was on the market for $3,285,000 in the spring of 2011. At the same time, Weiner was caught sending salacious text messages and nearly-naked photos of himself to women he met online.

The property came off the market last summer, after Weiner resigned and inked a deal to sell his modest, 875-square foot two-bedroom Forest Hills condo for $430,000.

Shortly after Weiner and his wife moved into the new place, records show, Abedin sold her Washington, DC, condo for $620,000. She had bought the place for $649,000 in 2006, taking out a $532,000 mortgage....

Meanwhile, like his new tenant, landlord Rosen is no stranger to sex scandals. In 1999, he was hauled into court by a Russian model who said she’d had an affair with the married dad of two and that he was the father of her young daughter. Rosen first denied paternity but then stopped fighting the suit, and the judge gave the child — who is now in high school — Rosen’s surname."...via Free Republic, via Breitbart


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