Well, well, look who’s slithered out of federal prison. It’s Anthony Weiner.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Weiner has been transferred from Federal Medical Center Devens in Massachusetts to a re-entry center in Brooklyn after serving just 15 months of a 21-month sentence, with the last few months knocked off for good behavior. Hmm. But what about the time he should be serving for single-handedly upending the presidential election? You know, the catastrophic chain of events that started with his inability to contain his dick and ended with Hillary Clinton losing the presidency to Donald Trump?
Weiner, a formerly popular New York congressman and one-time mayoral hopeful, was felled after repeatedly getting caught sending sexts to a variety of women—none of whom were his wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. But what might have been termed “gross behavior” or “extremely unwise” took a much more sinister (and illegal) turn when in 2017 he was caught sending illicit messages to a 15-year-old girl.
Weiner’s troubles stretch back to 2011, when he relinquished his congressional seat after he accidentally posted a photo of his penis sheathed beneath his underwear to his Twitter account. After initially attributing the photo to a hack, Weiner eventually admitted to sending lewd messages to women on the internet.
Two years later, Weiner announced that he intended to run for mayor of New York City. Much of the public was ready to forgive him for his previous indiscretions...until it was revealed that instead of quitting sexting women, he’d actually been very actively sexting multiple women, a fact that emerged mid-campaign. Suffice to say he did not become the mayor of New York City.
Fast forward to September of 2016; the climax of an endless, frothing, terrible presidential election season. Anthony Weiner’s name was the last thing anyone wanted to resurface, particularly in light of Abedin, who remained both A) married to Weiner and B) Hillary Clinton’s top adviser.
But far from just quietly vanishing like he should have, the Daily Mail reported that Weiner had not only continued sexting, but that one of his interlocutors was a 15-year-old girl. On their own, his actions were despicable. But unfortunately, they also had dire implications far outside the parties involved: In October, FBI agents seized Weiner’s electronic devices during a search for child pornography, including a laptop reportedly used by both Weiner and Abedin.
On that laptop, the agents found metadata suggesting that some of the 650,000 emails on the computer were from Abedin’s accounts, which may have been connected to Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. You know what happened next: Then-FBI Director James Comey was briefed on the investigation, and the rest is “But her emails!!” history.
Under the terms of his sentence, Weiner will have to register as a sex offender and spend three years on supervised release. But, again: Where’s the justice for the national nightmare that he may well have precipitated? What is the criminal charge for “fucking up the country, you complete and utter moron?”