Former Congressman Anthony Weiner, shown here in 2017, was freed Tuesday from a halfway house after serving a sentence for sexting with a 15-year-old girl. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI |
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May 14 (UPI) -- Disgraced former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner walked out of a Bronx halfway house Tuesday morning a free man after serving more than a year for sexting a 15-year-old girl as part of a series of events that ruined his political career and derailed his run for New York City mayor.
Authorities freed Weiner, 54, from a Massachusetts federal prison in February after serving 15 months and moved him to a Bronx re-entry center. He will have to register as a Level 1 sex offender, the lowest designation, for the next 20 years, the New York Daily News reported.
"It's good to be out," Weiner told reporters. "I hope to get back to my family and make up for some lost time."
Weiner pled guilty to sending numerous sexually explicit messages to a North Carolina high school student and served a prison sentence at the Federal Medical Center in Devens, Mass., before being moved to the halfway house.
Weiner was married to Hillary Clinton's top aide Huma Abedin when it was revealed that he was having inappropriate online interactions with several other women. He resigned from Congress because of the scandal, but ran for New York City mayor in 2013.
That run crashed after explicit photos he sent to at least one other woman were disclosed under the name "Carlos Danger."
Weiner became connected in the 2016 presidential campaign. While investigation Weiner's sexting allegations, the FBI found 141,000 emails on his laptop believed to be relevant to Clinton's email investigation and re-opened its probe into the Democratic presidential candidate.
Clinton had blamed the reopening of the investigation just before the election partly for her loss to President Donald Trump.
Abedin filed for divorce, but the couple decided in January to settle privately for the sake of their 6-year-old son.
