Weiner Sentenced To 21 Months In Prison For Sexting With Minor

Anthony Weiner. Image by Getty Images

By Daniel J. Solomon September 25, 2017

Anthony Weiner Image by Getty Images

Former congressman Anthony Weiner was sentenced Monday to 21 months in prison for exchanging lewd messages with a North Carolina teenager.

Weiner, who represented New York as a Democrat and later ran for New York City mayor, was felled by a series of sexting scandals—the worst of which occurred last year as he was prosecuted for sending obscene photos to a minor.

Weiner read a statement before the sentencing referring to himself as “a very sick man.” He had pled guilty in May, asking along with estranged wife Huma Abedin that he be spared prison.

Abedin, a top aide to former presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, filed for divorce after his guilty plea.

Weiner’s attorneys had implied that his teenage accuser might have had political motives in exposing him for his sexting—a charge that prosecutors used to argue that Weienr was not owning up for his actions.

“He initially denied his conduct, he suffered personal and professional consequences, he publicly apologized and claimed reform,” the prosectors wrote in a statement. “Yet he continued to engage in the very conduct he swore off.”

Daniel J. Solomon is the former Assistant to the Editor/News Writer at the Forward. Originally from Queens, he attended Harvard as an undergraduate, where he wrote his senior thesis on French-Jewish intellectual history. He is excited to have returned to New York after his time in Massachusetts. Daniel’s passions include folk music, cycling, and pointed argument.