Former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner entered a federal prison in Massachusetts Monday, marking the beginning of his 21-month sentence for sending sexually explicit material to an underage girl in 2016.
The disgraced 53-year-old ex-congressman represented New York’s 9th district in the US House of Representatives, an area which prior to redistricting in 2013 had a significant Orthodox Jewish population.
Weiner represented the 9th district in the House from 1999 until his resignation in the summer of 2011, after conservative activist and Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart revealed that Weiner had maintained an online relationship with a woman, sending her lewd pictures of himself and making sexually explicit comments.
The seven-term congressman was at the time married to senior Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, and eventually resigned from the House of Representatives. In a subsequent special election for Weiner’s vacated seat, Republican won in the heavily Democratic district, the first time, the first time a Republican had won the seat since 1920.
Despite the scandal, Weiner returned to politics in 2013, running in the Democratic primary for New York’s mayoral election.
In the midst of his mayoral bid, new revelations emerged showing Weiner had again engaged in “sexting” (sending and receiving sexually explicit photos and comments) with women online, using the alias Carlos Danger. Initially, Weiner remained adamant that he would continue his bid for the nomination. Just four days after a press conference where he pledged to stay in the race, however, Weiner dropped out of the Democratic primary.
Abedin drew criticism during the 2016 US Presidential campaign for allowing Weiner access to a joint laptop which contained government documents sent to her by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had mishandled state materials and maintained a secret primary email server.
In August 2016, Weiner was again accused of sending sexually explicit material to a woman via the internet. Abedin and Weiner separated shortly after the revalation.
A month later, The Daily Mail revealed that Weiner had maintained an online relationship with a 15-year-old high school student. The former congressman had, it was later discovered, sent lewd photographs of himself to the teenage girl, and encouraged her to perform vulgar acts and send explicit photographs of herself to him.
In a May 2017 plea bargain agreement, Weiner plead guilty to one charge of sending sexually explicit content to a minor, in exchange for having charges of child pornography dropped.
In September, Weiner was sentenced to 21 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervision by federal authorities. Weiner will also be obligated to register as a sex offender upon release from prison.