Nov. 6 (UPI) — Former congressman Anthony Weiner began his 21-month prison sentence Monday in Massachusetts, for sending lewd material via cellphone messages to a minor.
Weiner, 53, on Monday was set to enter the Federal Medical Center-Devens in Ayer, Mass., about 40 miles west of Boston. It’s the same prison where Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was held for two years — and Frank Locascio, 85, former underboss to the late John Gotti and New York’s Gambino crime family, served time.
The medical prison includes about 1,000 male inmates at the main complex and another 137 at an adjacent minimum security satellite camp. It includes an intense sex-offender treatment program.
For good behavior, Weiner can have his sentence reduced by three months.
In September, Judge Denise L. Cote of the U.S. District Court of Southern New York sentenced Weiner to 21 months. She said Weiner’s crime resulted from a “very strong compulsion.”
A tearful Weiner, who pleaded guilty to charges in May, said he’d been “a very sick man for a very long time” and was undergoing therapy.
“My regret for my crime is profound,” Weiner told Cote. “I have endangered the well-being of a 15-year-old girl who reached out to me on the internet. My continued acting out over years crushed the aspirations of my wife and ruined our marriage. I am so deeply sorry for the harm I have done to her, and I live with the sorrow that I will never be able to fix that. I have an addiction, but I don’t have an excuse.”
Weiner resigned his House seat in 2011 amid a different sexual controversy involving women. New allegations arose during his 2013 run for mayor. His wife, former Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, has filed for divorce.
Exactly one year ago Monday, the FBI announced that it had found nothing new in emails found on Weiner’s laptop computer to change the outcome of the Democratic candidate’s email investigation. That decision came two days before the presidential election.
Days earlier, then-FBI Director James Comey said he was taking another look at the investigation after emails were found on Weiner’s laptop, which were discovered while investigators searched for evidence in the former congressman’s “sexting” case.
