FILE – In this Sept. 25, 2017 file photo, former Congressman Anthony Weiner leaves federal court following his sentencing in New York. Weiner has been ordered to register as a sex offender as he nears the end of a 21-month prison sentence for having illicit online contact with a 15-year-old girl. A New York City judge on Friday, April 5, 2019, designated Weiner a Level 1 sex offender, meaning he’s thought to have a low risk of reoffending. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Anthony Weiner met with his probation officer Wednesday, a day after the disgraced ex-congressman was released from a halfway house where he finished his sentence for having illegal contact with a 15-year-old girl.
The 54-year-old Democrat did not comment as he left the Manhattan federal courthouse where the Probation Department is located.
Weiner, who served in Congress for nearly 12 years, was greeted by news photographers as he left court on his way to a taxi.
He had arrived alone around noon to fill out paperwork before meeting for an hour with a probation officer who will monitor his progress after he served most of his sentence of a year and nine months in prison. His sentence was shortened through good behavior.
He was imprisoned from November 2017 until February, at which time he was released to the halfway house. He was required to report to probation within three days and must register with the state of New York as a sex offender within 10 days.
Weiner was given special conditions at sentencing after pleading guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor. His lawyer said he had likely exchanged thousands of emails with hundreds of women online over the years.
Judge Denise Cote had ordered him during three years of probation to work full-time, to provide the Probation Department with all required financial information and to participate in a computer internet monitoring program and offer electronic devices for searches.
Weiner pleaded guilty after prosecutors said he asked a 15-year-old girl on three occasions in early 2016 to pose naked online and perform sexually.
The felony conviction came years after he resigned his Congressional seat in 2011. He was leading a race for New York City mayor in 2013 before new allegations of his online communications with women emerged and spoiled his campaign.
The latest scandal arose during the 2016 presidential campaign in a very public way.
In the month before the election, then FBI-Director James Comey announced he was reopening a probe of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private computer server after emails were found on Weiner’s computer between Clinton and Weiner’s then-wife, Huma Abedin, who was Clinton’s closest aide.
Two days before the election, the FBI said there was nothing new in the emails, though Clinton later called Comey’s intervention “the determining factor” in her defeat.
At sentencing, Weiner said he was a new man receiving twice-a-week therapy and believed his recovery was real.
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
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