Anthony Weiner was sentenced on Monday to 21 months in prison, in a sexting scandal that some blame for Hillary Clinton’s defeat by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
The former New York congressman and mayoral candidate, who is the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, had faced up to 27 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to one charge of transferring obscene material to a minor. He must report to prison by 6 November to begin serving his sentence for sexting with a 15-year-old girl.
November 6th…that iPhone battery is going to take a bruising!!!
As his sentence was announced, Weiner dropped his head into his hand and wept, then stared straight ahead. After the hearing ended and judge Denise Cote left the bench, he sat in his seat for several minutes, continuing to cry.
Weiner was also fined $10,000. After his sentence is served, he must undergo internet monitoring and must have no contact with his victim. He must also enroll in a sex-offender treatment program.
Before announcing the sentence, Cote said there was “no evidence of deviant interest in teenagers or minors” on Weiner’s part. She also said he was finally receiving effective treatment for what she said has been described as “sexual hyperactivity”.
Prosecutors said Weiner broke the law by having illicit contact with the 15-year-old girl, including asking her to “sexually perform” for him in conversations on Skype and Snapchat. Assistant US attorney Amanda Kramer urged Cote to give Weiner a significant prison sentence, in order to end his “tragic cycle” of sexting.
Weiner’s sexting not only destroyed his career in the US House of Representatives but also doomed his campaign for mayor and his marriage to Abedin. It also became an issue in the 2016 presidential election when then-FBI director James Comey cited emails discovered on a laptop used by Weiner to justify reopening the earlier probe of Clinton’s private computer server just days before the election. Trump: who’d have thought we’d be thanking Weiner?
Lawyers for the 53-year-old said in court papers that he was undergoing treatment and was profoundly sorry for subjecting the girl to what his lawyers called his “deep sickness”. They also portrayed the girl as an instigator, saying she wanted to generate material for a book and possibly influence the presidential election.
Prosecutors responded that Weiner should be sentenced to up to two years in prison for what he did, and his victim’s motives should not influence his punishment. They urged the judge to put Weiner’s claims of a therapeutic awakening in the context of a man who made similar claims after embarrassing, widely publicized interactions with adult women before encountering the teenager online in January 2016.
The conduct “suggests a dangerous level of denial and lack of self-control”, they said.
Weiner, wearing his wedding ring, seemed pensive just before the hearing began. His parents were in the courtroom but not his wife. He and Abedin are currently going through divorce proceedings.
More than any other factor, Clinton has blamed her loss on the timing of Comey’s announcement that he was reopening her email case. The FBI concluded there was nothing new in the emails, but Clinton called his intervention “the determining factor” in her loss in a recent NBC interview promoting her new campaign memoir.
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