Former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner’s attorneys argue in a Wednesday court filing that the disgraced lawmaker should not be sentenced to prison as a deterrent to future criminals because the public nature of his collapse should suffice.
“Simply put,” Weiner’s attorneys write, “no one wants to be Anthony Weiner — he is a national pariah.”
The memo, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, was filed ahead of Weiner’s Sept. 25 sentencing hearing that follows his May guilty plea on one count of transferring obscene materials to a minor.
The filing describes the former New York lawmaker’s long history of sexual misbehavior, which most recently manifested in the form of a lurid sexting relationship with a then-15-year-old girl.
Weiners’ attorneys accuse the teen of exchanging sexually explicit text messages with Weiner over a three month period with the intention of monetizing the experience by selling a tell all book. Weiner’s attorneys claim the girl’s motivations were not purely financial, but rather that she was motivated at least in part by political ambitions.
The memo alleges the girl was “looking to generate material for a book the Government has disclosed she is now shopping to publishers,” the filing says. “As she later stated to Government investigators, she also hoped to somehow influence the U.S. presidential election, in addition to securing personal profit.”
The filing further illustrates the extent of the girl’s financial motivations by pointing out that she was paid $30,000 to sell her story to the Daily Mail in September 2016.
Weiner’s libidinous tendencies first made headlines in 2009 when sexually explicit photographs cost him his congressional seat. Four years later another sexting scandal destroyed Weiner’s political comeback, forcing him to abandon his 2013 New York City mayoral bid.
Weiner’s most recent sexual escapade began in January 2016 when he began sending the North Carolina high school sophomore explicit messages after she contacted him on Twitter. Weiner communicated under the alias “T Dog,” and asked the teen to fulfill his ‘rape fantasies’ and dress up in ‘school girl outfits.’
After months of correspondence the teen began to feel uncomfortable and disclosed the relationship to her father and teacher.
Weiner’s attorneys say the former New York lawmaker was exchanging sexual text messages with 19 adult women around the period he was corresponding with the teen. One of the relationships made headlines in August 2016 when the New York Post obtained a photo of Weiner’s crotch positioned next to his sleeping son’s face.
‘When we would Skype, he would tell me that he was very lonely and that it had been a year since he and his wife [Huma] had sex, and that she really didn’t pay him any attention,’ the girl told the Daily Mail. ‘We would talk, just chatting for about 30 minutes and it would lead to more sexual things…asking me to undress…he’d comment on my body. He asked me about masturbation, and that kind of thing.’
The memo asks for a lenient sentence that mandates sex addiction treatment and community service. There is no mandatory minimum prison sentence for the charge but prosecutors have requested sentence between 21 months and 27 months.
Weiner’s case attracted rampant publicity after communications on Weiner’s laptop prompted the FBI to reopen their investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server less than two weeks before the 2016 presidential election.
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