Who's that knocking at your door? It's Anthony Weiner on a comeback tour

NEW YORK (AP) — Imagine this: You’re home for the evening, winding down. There’s a knock at the door.

Who’s there? It’s Anthony Weiner. And he wants your vote.

Yes, that Weiner: The guy whose once-promising political career was derailed by sexting scandals and then seemingly ended forever when he was imprisoned for sending sexually explicit messages to a 15-year-old girl.

But now Weiner's hoping to convince enough voters in lower Manhattan that he deserves yet another chance in a comeback bid for a seat on the New York City Council.

On a recent weekday at an apartment complex in the Lower East Side, the former congressman, 60, was knocking on doors, reintroducing himself to voters and reminding them about the election. And, on this Thursday at least, the would-be constituents aren’t slamming their doors in the registered sex offender’s face.

“It’s Anthony Weiner!” the candidate said after knocking on a door.

A man opens the door, his face lighting up with surprise.

“It is Anthony Weiner!” the man said, a big smile spreading across his face.

After some pleasantries and a reminder about the race, the man had an important question for the candidate: “Mind if I get a picture with you?”

And so it went as Weiner walked down floor after floor, knocking on doors. A quick hello here, a fast thank you there. Campaign literature flowed into hands. People seemed happy to see him.

It isn’t always this friendly. Weiner said he still struggles with how to speak about his scandal, calling it the “fundamental, unsolvable problem of the campaign.”

“Sometimes it’s with like real painful, kind of, honesty about what happened and sometimes it’s a little bit defensive, and sometimes, like, a woman at this street fair last week, she’s like, ‘I love you and I’m going to vote for you, but I voted for you before and how can I ever trust you?’” he said.

But, he notes, some people would rather talk about anything else.

“They’re like, ‘I don’t want to hear about that. I want to hear about me and I want to hear about how come there aren’t cops on the street and I want to hear about why my taxes are so high,’” he said.

Weiner, a brash and ambitious politician whose New York accent and wily, kinetic style made for solid theater on the House floor, was once someone worth watching in the Democratic Party. Back then, he represented a district in parts of Brooklyn and Queens.

His latest return to the political stage — this time for a City Council seat that covers Union Square and the East Village — pits him against state lawmaker Harvey Epstein, whose name's unfortunate proximity to convicted sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein inspired a “Saturday Night Live” bit, along with a handful of other low-key candidates.

The primary, on June 24, is considered the defining contest of the election, given the district's heavy Democratic bent. It's hard to know how it'll turn out in a low-turnout, early-summer primary where there's no deep political polling.

The comeback attempt comes more than a decade after his career imploded for sending a lewd picture of himself to a college student over Twitter in 2011.

He first tried to claim his account was hacked but eventually admitted to having inappropriate online interactions with at least six other women and resigned from Congress after serving there for more than a decade.

After leaving Washington, Weiner mounted a campaign for New York City mayor but was again undone after it was disclosed that he sent explicit photos under the alias “Carlos Danger” to at least one woman after leaving the House. The revelation tanked his mayoral bid.

Along the way, his marriage collapsed.

In 2017, his scandal entered the criminal realm after prosecutors said he had illicit online contact with a high school student. During the proceedings, Weiner’s lawyer said he probably exchanged thousands of messages with hundreds of women over the years and had been communicating with up to 19 women when he encountered the student.

He eventually pleaded guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor and was sentenced to 21 months in prison. He was required to register as a sex offender after his release in 2019.

Since then, he's worked as the CEO of a countertop company in Brooklyn and hosted a radio show where he would muse about politics, eventually finding himself ginning up his own ideas and wondering: Why not get back in the game? He opened a campaign account and donations started flowing in. He'd go out on the street and people wanted to sign his petitions.

“I knew I had things I wanted to say and I knew that I thought it was important that everyone try to do something at this point,” he said.

Still, his scandals are so much an elephant in the room that his campaign recently started circulating a mailer that, on one side, features a massive elephant alongside the text “Anthony Weiner knows you may have questions.” On the other side, a note from Weiner reads: “Since I am asking you for your vote again, I want to address the elephant in the room.”

It goes on: “I accepted responsibility, I did my time (literally) and paid my debt to society in full."

A man who answered one of Weiner’s door knocks told the candidate that he saw the mailer and said it was a smart move to address the scandals head-on.

The two then dove into political issues, chatting about crime, the subway and homeless people. As the conversation was coming in for a landing, the man told Weiner that showing up at his door to speak with him showed that he cared. He declined to give his name to an Associated Press reporter who approached him after Weiner had said goodbye and taken off down a flight of stairs.

After a few more meet-and-greets, Weiner wrapped up for the day. He left the complex, hopped on a bicycle and zipped off down the street.

Anthony Weiner hands a resident his campaign flyer while talking about his bid for New York City Council, Thursday, May 29, 2025 in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

Anthony Weiner slides a campaign flyer under a resident's door while campaigning for a seat on the New York City Council, Thursday, May 29, 2025 in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

Anthony Weiner campaigns at a building in the Lower East Side, Thursday, May 29, 2025, in New York, by knocking on doors and talking to residents about his bid for New York City Council (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

Anthony Weiner talks with a Lower East Side resident about his bid for New York City Council, Thursday, May 29, 2025 in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

Anthony Weiner knocks on a resident's door while capaigning for a seat on the New York City Council, Thursday, May 29, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty on Friday called on members of the public to send any video or other evidence in the fatal shooting of Renee Good directly to her office, challenging the Trump administration's decision to leave the investigation solely to the FBI.

Moriarty said that although her office has collaborated effectively with the FBI in past cases, she is concerned by the Trump administration's decision to bar state and local agencies from playing any role in the investigation into Wednesday's killing of Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis.

She also said that despite the Trump administration’s insistence that the officer who shot Good has complete legal immunity, that isn’t the case.

“We do have jurisdiction to make this decision with what happened in this case,” she said at a news conference. “It does not matter that it was a federal law enforcement agent.”

Moriarty said her office would post a link for the public to submit footage of the shooting, even though she acknowledged that she wasn't sure what legal outcome submissions might produce.

The prosecutor's announcement came on a third day of Minneapolis protests over Good's killing and a day after federal immigration officers shot and wounded two people in Portland, Oregon.

Good's wife, Becca Good, released a statement to Minnesota Public Radio on Friday saying, “kindness radiated out of her.”

"On Wednesday, January 7th, we stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns," Becca Good said.

“I am now left to raise our son and to continue teaching him, as Renee believed, that there are people building a better world for him,” she wrote. “That the people who did this had fear and anger in their hearts, and we need to show them a better way.”

The reaction to the Good's shooting was immediate in the city where police killed George Floyd in 2020, with hundreds of protesters converging on the shooting scene and the school district canceling classes for the rest of the week as a precaution.

On Thursday night, hundreds marched in freezing rain down one of Minneapolis’ major thoroughfares, chanting “ICE out now!” and holding signs saying, “Killer ice off our streets." And on Friday, protesters were out again demonstrating outside of a federal facility that is serving as a hub for the immigration crackdown that began Tuesday in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Authorities erected barricades outside the facility Friday.

City workers, meanwhile, removed makeshift barricades made of old Christmas trees and other debris that had been blocking the streets near the scene of Good's shooting. Officials said they would leave up a shrine to the 37-year-old mother of three.

The Portland shootings happened outside a hospital Thursday afternoon. Federal immigration officers shot and wounded a man and woman, identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Venezuela nationals Luis David Nico Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, who were inside a vehicle, and their conditions weren't immediately known. The FBI and the Oregon Department of Justice were investigating.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and the city council called on ICE to end all operations in the city until a full investigation is completed. Hundreds protested Thursday night at a local ICE building. Early Friday, Portland police reported that officers had arrested several protesters after asking the to get out of a street to allow traffic to flow.

Just as it did following Good's shooting, DHS defended the actions of the officers in Portland, saying it occurred after a Venezuelan man with alleged gang ties and who was involved in a recent shooting tried to “weaponize” his vehicle to hit the officers. It wasn't immediately clear if the shootings were captured on video, as Good's was.

The Minneapolis shooting happened on the second day of the immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities, which Homeland Security said is the biggest immigration enforcement operation ever. More than 2,000 officers are taking part and Noem said they have made more than 1,500 arrests.

The government is also shifting immigration officers to Minneapolis from sweeps in Louisiana, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. This represents a pivot, as the Louisiana crackdown that began in December had been expected to last into February.

Good's death — at least the fifth tied to immigration sweeps since Trump took office — has resonated far beyond Minneapolis, as protests happening in other places, including Texas, California, Detroit and Missouri.

In Washington, D.C., on Thursday, a woman held a sign that said, “Stop Trump’s Gestapo,” as hundreds of people marched to the White House. Protesters in Pflugerville, Texas, north of Austin, banged on the walls of an ICE facility. And a man in Los Angeles burned an American flag in front of federal detention center.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, President Donald Trump and others in his administration have repeatedly characterized the Minneapolis shooting as an act of self-defense and cast Good as a villain, suggesting she used her vehicle as a weapon to attack the officer who shot her.

But state and local officials and protesters rejected that characterization, with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey saying videos show the self-defense argument is “garbage.”

Several bystanders captured footage of Good's killing, which happened in a neighborhood south of downtown.

The recordings show an officer approaching an SUV stopped across the middle of the road, demanding the driver open the door and grabbing the handle. The Honda Pilot begins to pull forward and a different ICE officer standing in front of it pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots at close range, jumping back as the vehicle moves toward him.

It is not clear from the videos if the vehicle makes contact with the officer, and there is no indication of whether the woman had interactions with agents earlier. After the shooting, the SUV speeds into two cars parked on a curb before crashing to a stop.

The federal agent who fatally shot Good is an Iraq War veteran who has served for nearly two decades in the Border Patrol and ICE, according to records obtained by AP.

Noem has not publicly named him, but a Homeland Security spokesperson said her description of his injuries last summer refers to an incident in Bloomington, Minnesota, in which court documents identify him as Jonathan Ross.

Ross got his arm stuck in the window of a vehicle whose driver was fleeing arrest on an immigration violation. Ross was dragged and fired his Taser. A jury found the driver guilty of assaulting a federal officer with a dangerous weapon.

Attempts to reach Ross, 43, at phone numbers and email addresses associated with him were not successful.

Associated Press reporters Steve Karnowski and Mark Vancleave in Minneapolis; Ed White in Detroit; Valerie Gonzalez in Brownsville, Texas; Graham Lee Brewer in Norman, Oklahoma; Michael Biesecker in Washington; Jim Mustian and Safiyah Riddle in New York; Ryan Foley in Iowa City, Iowa; and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.

Protesters confront law enforcement outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026.(AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

Protesters' shadows are cast on the street near law enforcement outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

Protesters confront law enforcement outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026.(AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

An American flag burns outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

Two protesters are lit by a police light as they walk outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

Protesters are arrested by federal agents outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

Protesters sit on a barrier that is being assembled outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building as protesters gather in Minneapolis, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

Protesters stand off against law enforcement outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland, Ore., Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

Demonstrators protest outside the White House in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Protesters chant and march during a rally for Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer the day before, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Protesters gather during a rally for Renee Good, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis, after she was fatally shot by an ICE officer the day before. (AP Photo/Adam Bettcher)

Protesters confront federal agents outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)

People gather around a makeshift memorial honoring the victim of a fatal shooting involving federal law enforcement agents, near the site of the shooting, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)

U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino arrives as protesters gather outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)

A protester pours water in their eye after confronting law enforcement outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minn. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)

People gather around a makeshift memorial honoring the victim of a fatal shooting involving federal law enforcement agents, near the site of the shooting, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Tom Baker)