“A weird one. Never seen one like it.” That’s what Chris Cuomo said, after he and CNN co-host Kate Bolduan concluded their report Thursday morning on the surprising news — should we say, latest surprising news — regarding 9th District congressman Steve Cohen and Victoria Brink of Houston, the congressman’s erstwhile tweet-mate and, we had supposed, his daughter.
That supposition — held by ourselves, Ms. Brink, and most of the attending world since last February — has now been dispelled by a simple DNA test, taken by Cohen, Brink, and the man who raised her, Houston oilman John Brink. The test results show that Cohen, who had apparently been involved with Ms. Brink’s mother during a period when he could have been the young aspiring model’s father, is, however, not her father.
John Brink is. He never thought he wasn’t, even when Rep. Cohen announced to the world in February that he was. As the Washington Post quotes oilman Brink after the DNA testing, which was voluntary all the way around: “I changed her first diaper; I cut her umbilical cord. You can’t doubt that.”
Cohen’s claim of paternity had come after it was disclosed he had been sending fond tweets to Victoria Brink while sitting in the House of Representatives chamber during President Obama’s State-of-the-Union address.
The congressman’s critics pounced on the fact, and, in response, he made what he clearly thought at the time was a full — and authentic — disclosure: The young lady was his daughter, a fact which, he said, he had discovered some three years earlier and which had led to their spending considerable catch-up time together.
Many wondered at the time just how John Brink, who had been her presumed father, would respond to this. Now we know.
Cohen’s reaction to the DNA news was, understandably, somewhat crestfallen. Pronouncing himself “stunned and dismayed,” he said, “I still love Victoria, hold dear the time I have shared with her and hope to continue to be a part of her life.”
It is to be hoped that all, indeed, live happily ever after.
Meanwhile, no evident change in the status of Cohen’s feelings about chanteuse Cindy Lauper, whom the congressman also got caught tweeting back in April, rhapsodically praising her rendition of “Try a Little Tenderness” at a just concluded tribute to Memphis music at the White House.
At the time, Cohen said his tweet had been part of a conscious effort to show up the sensation-hungry media.
