She may have been on the losing side of the most contentious presidential battle in generations, but Huma Abedin is poised to become a winner on the publishing front.
Sources say the longtime adviser to Hillary Clinton and estranged wife of disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner has been meeting with top literary agents during the past few weeks to discuss a book that is envisioned as a reflection on how her personal and professional lives collided during the campaign. Days before the 2016 election, the FBI announced that while investigating allegedly illicit text messages from Weiner to a 15-year-old girl, it had unearthed emails related to Clinton’s private server. Any momentum that Clinton carried going into the polls appeared to be wiped out.
Abedin, 40, may forgo a rep and sell directly to a publisher. She’s said to be seeking as much as $2 million for the book, which has received Clinton’s blessing.
Abedin’s appeal is that she’s never given an interview on the incident (though she did appear in the 2016 documentary Weiner, which chronicled a previous sexting scandal). “She’s more interesting than her husband. We know who he is. She’s the ongoing mystery,” says Princeton University presidential historian Julian Zelizer. “But she’ll have to put herself out there. That’s what the publisher will be looking for.”
At least one top lit agent says she is definitely not in the Abedin sweepstakes. “No one would have approached me with this book because they know I’m not a Hillary fan. I’m an Obama fan,” says ICM Partners’ Esther Newberg. “This will be an interesting sale to see who wants to know what [Weiner] said to her each time he was caught. If she reveals a lot, it turns your stomach. If she doesn’t, she puts the publisher in a bad place.”
This story first appeared in the April 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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