Jewish Lawmaker ‘Stunned’ To Find Out Bikini Model Isn’t Love Child After All
Tennessee U.S. Representative Steve Cohen said on Thursday he was “stunned and dismayed” that a DNA test showed he was not the father of a woman he considered his daughter for years.
Cohen, a Memphis Democrat, and Victoria Brink believed they were father and daughter for the last 3 1/2 years, according to the statement from Cohen.
But CNN reported on Thursday that it had obtained DNA from Victoria Brink, Cohen and John Brink, the man who raised her, and tests confirmed John Brink was her father.
“The results showed that Cohen was not Victoria Brink’s father,” the network said.
Cohen, 64, who was elected in 2006, had said the woman was his daughter after reporters noticed his post on Twitter to “beautiful girl” on the night of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.
CNN said Victoria Brink was 23 years old at the time of the tweet in February.
“I was stunned and dismayed when DNA tests disproved what Victoria and I believed about our relationship,” Cohen said in a statement on Thursday. “I still love Victoria, hold dear the time I have shared with her, and hope to continue to be a part of her life,” he said.
Cohen, who is single, said he had a relationship with Victoria Brink’s mother nine months before her birth and thought he was the woman’s father.
Cohen’s penchant for tweeting also made headlines in April when he posted that Cyndi Lauper was “hot” during a function at the White House.
He later said he wrote the tweet and then deleted it on purpose as a sort of a joke on the press.
Brink Tweeted yesterday to alert friends that CNN planned to reveal “something BIG that impacted my life and family!”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO