text: The young woman who leaked screenshots of her post-resignation sexting with Anthony Weiner told TheDirty.com that she wanted to remain anonymous, but since we’re dealing with the Internet here, it took only a few hours for her to be identified. BuzzFeed has obtained images from Facebook and Formspring that seem to match the blurred shots posted on TheDirty.com, and rummaged through the now-shuttered accounts. She appears to be an Indiana woman in her early twenties who was a field organizer for Obama for America and listed Weiner as number three on her list of heroes. In separate posts, she wrote that Weiner “did nothing wrong” and “can continue sending dick pics every single day for the rest of his life as long as he continues to legislate like he does.” 
   
   The woman used the handles “Sydney Leathers” and “sidneyelainexo,” and BuzzFeed reported early on Wednesday morning that her name is Sydney Elaine Leathers. A high school friend confirmed that the pair had raunchy online chats last summer, saying, “I saw the messages and the message said ‘Anthony Weiner.’” The friend claims that Weiner promised to “move her to either Chicago or New York,” and says Leathers “felt she was the important one,” even topping Huma Abedin. 
   
   After nervously speaking on Weiner’s behalf at her first press conference, on Tuesday evening Abedin offered up a second defense of her husband, somewhat unwittingly. She had already penned an essay for the September issue of Harper’s Bazaar, and the magazine published an early excerpt (titled “The Good Wife”). In the piece, Abedin explains, once again, why she decided to stay with her husband. “Anthony has always been a smart, caring, and dedicated person, and while he’s the same public servant who wants what’s best for the people he represents, he is now something else — a better man,” she says. Her prescient conclusion: ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
target: – BuzzFeed has identified Anthony Weiner's newly revealed sexting partner as Sydney Elaine Leathers, a progressive activist in her early 20s who lives in Indiana. Pictures on her Facebook and Formspring accounts look pretty close to the blurred images offered up on The Dirty when it broke the sexting story, and she's talked about Weiner quite a bit online (often on accounts that are now deleted). For example, in a June 2011 Facebook post, she declared: "Rep. Weiner can continue sending dick pics every single day for the rest of his life as long as he continues to legislate like he does. I decided." Her TwitPic account identifies her as an Obama for America field organizer. She also listed Weiner as one of her heroes, wrote at least one blog post about his resignation, and said on Facebook that he shouldn't have resigned. An anonymous source confirms BuzzFeed got the ID right and says he or she saw the messages exchanged a year ago, but a BuzzFeed reporter asked Weiner last night if he knew Leathers and—shocker—got no response. The source, who says he or she has known Leathers since high school, says she "felt she was the important one" to Weiner, even more important than wife Huma Abedin. As for Abedin, Daily Intel notes that she came to a "prescient conclusion" in September's Harper's Bazaar: "People have said many things about my husband—some nice, some not so nice. And that will surely continue. Launching this campaign was not an easy decision for our family to make. Putting yourself out there comes with a cost." (Meanwhile, "cubicle guy" has become a viral sensation after Weiner's press conference last night.)