Disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner to register as sex offender after prison release

Democrat will have to register as a sex-offender and spend three years on supervised release

Chris Riotta
New York
Sunday 17 February 2019 21:37 GMT
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Former US Representative Anthony Weiner leaves federal court, Friday, 19 May 2017, in New York. Weiner pleaded guilty to a charge of transmitting sexual material to a minor and could get years in prison
Former US Representative Anthony Weiner leaves federal court, Friday, 19 May 2017, in New York. Weiner pleaded guilty to a charge of transmitting sexual material to a minor and could get years in prison

Disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner has been released from federal prison after being convicted of having illicit online contact with a 15-year-old girl in 2017.

He will have to register as a sex-offender and spend three years on supervised release under the terms of his sentence.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons website shows the 54-year-old New York Democrat is currently in the custody of its Residential Re-entry Management office in Brooklyn, New York.

It’s not immediately clear when he was transferred and where he is currently staying.

The prison bureau, federal prosecutors in New York and Weiner’s lawyer didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.

Weiner began serving a 21-month prison sentence at the Federal Medical Center Devens, in Ayer, a small town around 40 miles west of Boston Massachusetts, in November 2017.

The bureau website shows Weiner is slated to complete his sentence on 14 May, a few months earlier than scheduled because of good conduct in prison.

Once a rising star in the Democratic Party who served nearly 12 years in Congress, Weiner had a dramatic fall from grace after he sent a lewd picture of himself to a college student on Twitter in 2011.

Weiner initially claimed his account had been hacked, but later admitted he had inappropriate online interactions with at least six other women while married to Hillary Clinton's senior aide Huma Abedin.

Weiner resigned from Congress that year but mounted a campaign for New York City mayor in 2013.

But his personal behaviour was again his undoing after it was disclosed he sent explicit photos under the alias “Carlos Danger” to at least one woman after resigning from Congress.

Weiner ultimately garnered less than 5 per cent of the vote in the Democratic primary.

His final fall came in 2017 after prosecutors say he sent a series of sexually explicit messages to a North Carolina high school student. Weiner pleaded guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor.

At his sentencing, he said he’d been a “very sick man for a very long time” because of his sex addiction.

Weiner’s attorney said the former politician likely exchanged thousands of messages with hundreds of women over the years and was communicating with up to 19 women when he encountered the teenager.

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Ms Abedin also filed for divorce from Weiner in 2017.

But the two, who have a young son together, later agreed to discontinue the case in order to negotiate their separation privately.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

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