MANHATTAN (CN) — Wiping tears from his eyes in a packed federal courtroom, Anthony Weiner confessed Friday that his years-long social-media compulsion “hit bottom” with racy messages to an underage teenager.
"I have a sickness, but I do not have an excuse," Weiner said on Friday, the coda of a half-decade-long public downfall.
The former New York congressman’s guilty plea this morning falls almost six years to the day he first posted a photo of himself in his underwear, visibly aroused, on his public Twitter account.
It also comes eight months after a British tabloid reported on sexually explicit messages Weiner sent a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina, spurring investigations by federal and local law enforcement in the Tar Heel and Empire States.
Waiving indictment and trial in Manhattan this morning, Weiner pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska to one count of transferring obscene materials to a minor.
Court papers corroborate the Daily Mail’s report that he used Internet messaging and video chat applications with a teenage girl, goading her to engage in sexual conduct and send pictures.
"I knew this was as morally wrong as it was unlawful," Weiner said this morning.
Though Friday's 7-page plea deal calls for a likely prison sentence of 21 months to 27 months, Weiner could still theoretically face up to 10 years behind bars and a $250,000 fine under the statute.
The 52-year-old must also register as a sex offender, and turn over the iPhone that wrecked his once-promising political career.
It was in 2011 that Weiner's tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives fell apart, after he accidentally tweeted a suggestive photograph that he had apparently meant to send privately. The Democrat's New York City mayoral run likewise tanked two years later amid reports that he sent another woman nude photos, calling himself Carlos Danger.
Even then, political redemption appeared within reach.
Embracing his brash, pugnacious and exhibitionist persona, the priapic politician gave documentary filmmakers unfettered access to record his mayoral campaign’s spectacular self-destruction.
Weiner’s honesty about his personal failings, combative stance toward his critics and humor about his “funny name” charmed audiences, even as these qualities brought repeated public humiliation to Weiner’s then-wife — Huma Abedin, a former top Hillary Clinton aide.
But the image of Weiner in court on Friday was one of a defeated man: wearing a drained expression, grasping his hands together, and bereft of the signature defiance that carried him through past upheaval.