Disgraced ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner released from prison

AYER, Massachusetts (AP) — Disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner has been released from federal prison after being convicted of having illicit online contact with a 15-year-old girl in 2017.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons website shows the 54-year-old New York Democrat is currently in the custody of its Residential Re-entry Management office in Brooklyn, New York.

It’s not immediately clear when Weiner was transferred and where he’s staying now, but Weiner will have to register as a sex-offender and spend three years on supervised release under the terms of his sentence.

The prison bureau and Weiner’s lawyer didn’t respond to emails seeking comment Sunday. Federal prosecutors in New York referred an inquiry to the prison bureau.

Weiner began serving a 21-month prison sentence at the Federal Medical Center Devens, located about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of Boston in Ayer, Massachusetts, in November 2017.

The bureau website shows Weiner is slated to complete his sentence May 14, a few months earlier than scheduled because of good conduct in prison.

A once-rising star in the Democratic Party who served nearly 12 years in Congress, Weiner had a dramatic and sordid fall from grace after he sent a lewd picture of himself to a college student over Twitter in 2011.

Weiner initially claimed his account had been hacked, then admitted he’d had inappropriate online interactions with at least six other women while married to top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

Weiner resigned from Congress that year but mounted a campaign for New York City mayor in 2013.

But his personal behavior was again his undoing after it was disclosed he sent explicit photos under the alias “Carlos Danger” to at least one woman after resigning from Congress.

Weiner ultimately garnered less than 5 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary.

His final fall came in 2017 after prosecutors say he sent a series of sexually explicit messages to a North Carolina high school student. Weiner pleaded guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor.

At his sentencing, he said he’d been a “very sick man for a very long time” because of his sex addiction.

Weiner’s attorney said the ex-lawmaker likely exchanged thousands of messages with hundreds of women over the years and was communicating with up to 19 women when he encountered the teenager.

Abedin also filed for divorce from Weiner in 2017. But the two, who have a young son together, later agreed to discontinue the case in order to negotiate their separation privately.