poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201608/1873/1155968404_5103424915001_5054222745001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Clinton aide Abedin dumps Weiner after more lewd texts The high-powered couple had been 'estranged' for about a year, a person close to Abedin said. 
 
 Top Hillary Clinton adviser Huma Abedin on Monday announced she is separating from her husband, Anthony Weiner, after six rocky years of marriage during which the couple’s shared vision of a political future together has been disrupted multiple times by humiliating revelations of the former congressman’s compulsive sexting habit. 
 
 "After long and painful consideration and work on my marriage, I have made the decision to separate from my husband," Abedin said in a statement. "Anthony and I remain devoted to doing what is best for our son, who is the light of our life. During this difficult time, I ask for respect for our privacy." 
 
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 The announcement comes after the New York Post reported on Sunday night about Weiner's latest sexually explicit messages with another woman. Weiner, who has been married to Abedin since July 2010, resigned from Congress in 2011 after mistakenly tweeting an explicit image of himself intended as a direct message. 
 
 Abedin, who was embarrassed by Weiner's decision to permit filmmakers to document his failed 2013 failed New York City mayoral run, was hoping to end the marriage outside the glare of the mid-campaign cameras. But the new images — especially the image of Weiner in underwear on a bed next to their young son — were simply too much to bear, said one Abedin friend. 
 
 A person close to Abedin said the couple has been "estranged" for about a year and "essentially" separated — although they still share both their Manhattan apartment and parenting duties. Over the past few months, people close to the couple have painted a portrait of a marriage on the verge of collapse, and reporters covering the campaign have noticed in recent weeks that Abedin has often appeared in public without her wedding or engagement rings. 
 
 They have, however, made high-profile public appearances together during that time. In May, for instance, the couple attended the celebrity-studded Met Ball and posed for society column photographers together. And in a glossy profile in Vogue magazine earlier this month, Abedin credited her husband’s willingness to function as a “full-time dad” as part of the support system that allowed her to take on such a demanding role in the campaign. 
 
 Abedin, according to two people in her orbit, didn't know the Post story was in the works before heading to the Hamptons for her annual working vacation with the Clintons — who have been ferociously fundraising — and Clinton intimates like Cheryl Mills, along with Abedin's own family, including her sister Heba and her son Jordan. Weiner was not invited, they told POLITICO. 
 
 "She wasn't fleeing the media," said a person close to the longtime Clinton body woman — whom the Democratic nominee has likened to a second daughter. "But it worked out for the best, being surrounded by her family and her friends ... It's a difficult day but she'll get through it." 
 
 Several other Abedin friends and colleagues expressed similar sentiments: While they were concerned for her well-being over the next few days and weeks, they are happy that Weiner was being given his walking papers. "Anything that ensures he's no longer around is good news," said one fellow Clinton staffer. 
 
 And Clinton allies immediately rallied around Abedin. “Huma is like family, not just to Hillary Clinton, but to the … whole campaign” Jennifer Granholm, vice chair of Clinton’s transition committee said on MSNBC. “She is like the glue. And I'm sure that the whole campaign is hoping that people respect her privacy and grieve with her over what is happening.” 
 
 But some allies are privately expressing concern that Abedin’s high public profile — she is a near-constant presence by Clinton’s side and has become a celebrity in her own right, with fans even stopping her for selfies — could enable her personal story to overshadow Clinton’s message in the final 70 days of the campaign. 
 
 “It would be helpful for her to take a step back from the campaign for a while,” said one Clinton ally close to the campaign, “or at least get off the campaign trail and work in Brooklyn. But I doubt that is going to happen.” 
 
 Another Clinton ally expressed concern that Abedin would remain a target — of the media and of Donald Trump — if she remained in the spotlight. 
 
 But campaign aides said there was no indication that Abedin’s personal life will affect her professional role as a key player in Clinton’s traveling inner circle. “The sentiment has been one thing and one thing only: We only want to do what is in the best interest of Huma,” said a Clinton aide. 
 
 In conversations Sunday evening and Monday morning, among a brain trust of about seven staffers and confidantes in Clinton’s inner circle, the idea of Abedin taking a step back for the critical final months of the campaign was never broached, the aide said. “We are entirely focused on the fact that Huma needs to do what she needs to do, and we’re going to help her.” 
 
 Clinton herself, longtime associates said, is likely to return the support and loyalty of one of her longest-serving aides. “She’s going to want to be supportive of her, and tell her, ‘whatever you want to do,’” said one Clinton confidante. And Abedin is known among her colleagues as someone who feels most comfortable, and derives most of her power, when in close proximity to the candidate. 
 
 But over the past year, she has already been slowly backing off of some of the more quotidian campaign travel days in an effort to shed her “body woman” persona. She did travel with Clinton for her latest fundraising swing through California, for instance, but served more as a sort of campaign ambassador to celebrities and big donors. And on regular campaign days, she has been working from the office more often than the road. 
 
 Abedin, who has fended off Republican attacks for years, has come under renewed scrutiny for her role in handling requests from Bill Clinton aide Doug Band, who peppered the secretary of state’s office with requests for meetings with Clinton Foundation donors, according to recently released emails. The Clinton campaign has dismissed as “cherry-picking” an Associated Press investigation finding that the Democratic nominee met with dozens of foundation donors as secretary. 
 
 The future seems uncertain for Weiner, whose Twitter account had vanished Monday morning after the Post's report. And in another sign of the expanding fallout, New York Daily News opinion editor Josh Greenman confirmed to POLITICO that the newspaper will no longer run his column, which it has published since 2014. The local station NY1, where Weiner was a regular paid talking head, also placed him on "indefinite leave," CNN reported. 
 
 The former congressman has resurfaced repeatedly in 2016, in part due to the documentary that he said Abedin never consented to doing (a spokeswoman for the filmmaker told The New York Times that everyone had consented to appearing in the film), and in no small measure thanks to Trump, who has also made repeated digs at Clinton for her association with Weiner as Abedin's husband. 
 
 On Monday, Trump praised Abedin for "making a very wise decision," though he took a shot at her boss for good measure. 
 
 "I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him," the Republican nominee said in a statement. "I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information. Who knows what he learned and who he told? It's just another example of Hillary Clinton's bad judgment. It is possible that our country and its security have been greatly compromised by this." 
 
 Trump was more colorful during an interview Monday on KIRO Radio 97.3 FM’s “The Dori Monson Show.” 
 
 “Here’s a guy that what he’s done over the internet is disgusting, and he’s a pervert and just a very sick guy,” he said. “He’s a sick puppy, and so, you know, it just happened and it’s, you know, it’s actually sad in many ways,” adding that Weiner’s behavior was “hard to comprehend.” 
 
 Speaking to the Times' Mark Leibovich in an interview published earlier this month, Weiner dodged a pointed question about whether he was still doing the same things that had previously caused trouble to him and those around him. Instead, Weiner used the query as an opportunity to score political points against Trump. 
 
 "I’m not going to go down the path of talking about any of that. But I will say this: There’s no doubt that the Trump phenomenon has led a lot of people to say to me, 'Boy, compared to inviting the Russians to come hack someone’s email, your thing seems almost quaint,'" Weiner said, referring to Trump's self-described "sarcastic" request for the Russians to leak the contents of Clinton's deleted emails. 
 
 Trump has shared his thoughts about the disgraced congressman on multiple occasions through his various sexting controversies and failed mayoral comeback bid. 
 
 "Wife Huma wants @RepWeiner to 'pull a @billclinton by giving a tell-all interview.' Unlike Clinton, Anthony is a sick puppy," Trump tweeted on July 16, 2012, after writing, "he's a sexual pervert & they can never be healed. Huma should drop him before it happens again." 
 
 Asked by a Twitter user in July 2013 what advice he would give Abedin, Trump responded, "Take off!" 
 
 "Huma should dump the sicko Weiner. He is a calamity that is bringing her down with him," Trump wrote on Sept. 23, 2013. 
 
 Months after launching his presidential campaign, Trump suggested that Weiner was a security risk. 
 
 "It came out that Huma Abedin knows all about Hillary’s private illegal emails," Trump tweeted on Aug. 31, 2015. "Huma’s PR husband, Anthony Weiner, will tell the world." 
 
 Granholm on Monday called Trump's warnings about potentially compromised national secrets "ridiculous." 
 
 "I think that Donald Trump and everyone else should respect the privacy of Huma Abedin who is, as you know, an utterly graceful, wonderful human being who's going through a terrible situation," the former Michigan governor said on MSNBC. "So I say let us respect their privacy, and it's nonsense about classified information." 
 
 Nolan McCaskill contributed to this report. ||||| Former representative Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) was sentenced Sept. 25 to 21 months in jail for transferring obscene material to a minor. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) 
 
 This post, originally published in May, has been updated with news that Weiner has been sentenced to 21 months in jail for sexting with a minor. 
 
 He was a congressman, he was a sexter. 
 
 He was a mayoral candidate, he was a sexter. 
 
 He was the subject of a cringing documentary, he was a sexter. 
 
 He was ultimately the owner of a computer, seized by the FBI for sexting, that ended up playing a massive role in the 2016 presidential election. He was the husband of one of Hillary Clinton's trusted aides, and now he's about to be her ex-husband. 
 
 And now, Anthony Weiner will go to jail. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison Monday after pleading guilty in May to a single charge of sending obscene material to a minor, related a 15-year-old girl he'd been talking to online. 
 
 This is Weiner's story, and it's a sad one. 
 
 Since the New York Democratic congressman resigned in 2011, Weiner popped back into the public sphere like the creatures from one of those whack-a-mole games at the arcade, often when we'd least expect him. And each time, the political world couldn't look away. And each time, we felt something different about this man and his phone and his self-described addiction. 
 
 [Why do politicians cheat?] 
 
 Weiner's story was first late-night-TV-worthy (a picture of his you-know-what out there on Twitter? And his last name is Weiner?!). 
 
 It morphed into a classic politician sex scandal, his devoted and poised wife standing next to him: “I have said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have,” he said in a 2013 news conference as new sexts emerged in the middle of his failed run for mayor of New York City. "… There is no question that what I did was wrong. This behavior is behind me.” 
 
 Then-New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, at a 2013 news conference. (Eric Thayer/Reuters) 
 
 Then Weiner's story became a bloody car crash unfolding on our TV screens as “Weiner,” a May 2016 documentary about that mayoral run that immolated his higher-profile wife. Huma Abedin was in the middle of trying to hold together a presidential campaign for her longtime boss and friend, Hillary Clinton, and the documentary probing the rifts in her marriage was just plain weird. 
 
 “It was astonishing for Abedin to have allowed such a film as 'Weiner' to be made at all — much less to put a high-definition, close-up lens to the most humiliating chapter of her life,” wrote The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty. 
 
 Also, what about Weiner? “Why would Weiner want such a film out there? Is it a blind addiction to the spotlight? Some kind of twisted PR ploy? An effort to humanize himself?” I asked at the time. 
 
 Apparently Weiner got some kind of boost from it. He tried to bait Donald Trump Jr. into running against him for mayor of New York City. 
 
 .@anthonyweiner on @DonaldJTrumpJr 4 Mayor of NYC: "I'd come out of retirement just to beat him like a rented mule" pic.twitter.com/C9YCDZ74A0 — Joe Toohey (@joetoohey) July 26, 2016 
 
 Too soon Anthony!!! You probably shouldn't be talking about beating anything ever again. Go back to your cave. https://t.co/Mingecu6o9 — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 26, 2016 
 
 Then, Weiner's story took its final, dark turn. A few months after the documentary was released, Weiner sexted again. This time with his toddler son in the bed next to him. Allegedly with a 15-year-old, who released the photos to a British tabloid. Daily Mail reported that he'd been in a months-long online relationship with a 15-year-old girl. 
 
 By the next morning, Weiner had deleted his Twitter account. By that afternoon, Abedin announced that the two were separating. 
 
 Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner are separating pic.twitter.com/4WVZxfTMmo — Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) August 29, 2016 
 
 Flashback: Just two weeks ago, Weiner was asked if sexting had stopped. He deflected. https://t.co/eHXyf1R9hQ pic.twitter.com/M2iXPnnFIp — Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) August 29, 2016 
 
 This car crash wasn't satisfying to look at anymore. “Anthony Weiner is gross,” wrote Chris Cillizza at The Fix. “Let's stop paying attention to him.” 
 
 Talk turned to whether Weiner's sex scandals were psychosomatic. 
 
 “It's about people who use intense fantasy to escape,” Robert Weiss, a sex and tech addiction expert for Elements Behavioral Health addiction treatment centers, told The Fix, speaking about politicians who cheat in broad terms. 
 
 We desperately wanted to be done with Weiner. But Weiner wasn't done with us. 
 
 The FBI seized his computer to investigate whether he had sent inappropriate photos or videos to a minor. And on that computer, they found something else: emails Clinton sent and received using a private server while secretary of state. 
 
 Eleven days before the presidential election, Weiner's sexting turned into a political bomb for Democrats. Then-FBI Director James B. Comey told Congress the FBI had found new Clinton emails in an unrelated investigation. 
 
 “I can't consider for a second whose political fortunes will be affected in that way,” Comey would testify to Congress months later. 
 
 Clinton lost the election. She'd later come to the conclusion that Anthony Weiner's sexual desires — and the FBI's decision to tell Congress the world about her previously undiscovered secretary of state emails sitting on a server with Weiner's sexts — were a big reason she lost. 
 
 “When we heard this Huma looked stricken,” Clinton wrote in her new book “What Happened.” “Anthony had already caused so much heartache. And now this. ‘This man is going to be the death of me,’ [Huma] said, bursting into tears.” 
 
 Of course it was Weiner. It was inevitable that this guy we wanted nothing more of would play a starring role in one of the biggest news stories of one of the biggest presidential elections in recent memory. 
 
 Arguably, Weiner is STILL haunting us. Comey testified to Congress in May that Abedin had “forwarded hundreds and thousands” of Clinton emails to her husband, which is one reason the FBI director decided to alert Congress so close to the election. Turns out there were far fewer emails on Weiner's computer, the FBI announced several days later. 
 
 That evening, Trump fired Comey (although he didn't originally say it was because of Comey's misstatements, it was a good excuse to pull the trigger). And now Trump is living with the consequences of that decision, an investigation into whether he obstructed justice. Trump's problems, in a weird way, has its roots in one of the weirdest political stories of the social media age. 
 
 Weiner's modern political story is guffaw-worthy. Cynical. Just plain puzzling. Gross. Criminal. And somehow, influential. ||||| Anthony Weiner will finally be cut off. 
 
 The pervy ex-pol whose years-long self-destructive sexting run sabotaged his own blossoming political career and marriage and helped torpedo Hillary Clinton’s shot at the White House will plead guilty Friday to a charge of transferring obscene material to a minor, possibly sending him to prison. 
 
 Weiner was taken into FBI custody Friday morning, a source told the Daily News, and he will enter the plea in a federal courtroom in Manhattan at 11:00 a.m. 
 
 The 52-year-old disgraced former congressman had been under federal investigation for having allegedly exchanged sexually explicit messages and images with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina in 2016. 
 
 Anthony Weiner has been under federal investigation for having allegedly exchanged sexuall explicit messages and images with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. (Richard Drew/AP) 
 
 Weiner could now face up to 10 years in prison for the charge and will likely have to register as a sex offender, but he could also avoid prison altogether. 
 
 A federal judge will determine his sentence at a later date. 
 
 Earlier this year, Weiner’s lawyers had reportedly been in talks with federal prosecutors for weeks, angling for a plea deal to avoid the most serious possible charge, production of child pornography, which would have carried a 15-year mandatory minimum sentence. 
 
 Weiner's estranged wife, Huma Abedin (l.), is a senior aide to Hillary Clinton. (Andrew Harnik/AP) 
 
 The expected plea stems from Weiner’s most recent sexting scandal. Last year, a North Carolina teen came forward last year to say that he had been exchanging explicit messages with her. 
 
 The girl said she decided to go public with their exchanges after seeing reports of Weiner sending pics to another woman with his toddler son in the background. 
 
 The teen has claimed he encouraged her to role-play rape fantasies with him and to say his name while touching herself. 
 
 Weiner's 2013 mayoral hopes were dashed in by the emergence of fresh scandal. (Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News) 
 
 Weiner reportedly went by the name “T-Dog” while texting the teen and used an encryption app that erases messages and pictures as soon as they’re seen. 
 
 In one shirtless photo sent to the girl, Weiner’s hand is gripping his genitals. 
 
 The investigation follows a series of public embarrassments that cost Weiner his political career and his marriage — and may have helped damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. 
 
 Front page of the New York Daily News for September 22, 2016: Disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner, whose long-suffering wife Huma Abedin recently dumped him, is caught sexting once again, this time with a 15-year-old girl. This time, his transgressions could land him in jail. 15 COULD GET HIM 20 (New York Daily News) Front page of the New York Daily News for May 4, 2017: Hillary Clinton's top aide Huma Abedin is the person who helped torpedo her presidential campaign, FBI Director James Comey claimed Wednesday, because Abedin regularly forwarded classified government emails to her serial sexting spouse Anthony Weiner so the disgraced former pol could print them out for her. HUMA ERROR (New York Daily News) Daily News front pages for Sept. 22, 2016 and May 4, 2017. 
 
 Weiner’s estranged wife Huma Abedin, a top aide to Clinton, had announced their separation last August after Weiner was caught sending a lewd selfie that showed his 4-year-old son lying next to him in bed. 
 
 Investigators soon seized Weiner’s electronic devices, including a laptop and a cell phone, as part of the probe into that picture, leading to a series of events that many say contributed to Clinton losing the election. 
 
 Federal investigators soon uncovered emails on his laptop that were sent by his estranged wife, prompting FBI Director James Comey to reopen an investigation into Clinton’s emails out of concern the shared computer might have had classified documents. 
 
 Porn star Sydney Leathers had a hand in Weiner's undoing. (Bryan Smith) 
 
 Comey quickly closed the case without any charges, but his announcement, just days before the election, that he’d reopened it at all created negative publicity during a critical moment of the presidential campaign. 
 
 Democrats said the attention might have contributed to President Trump’s win. 
 
 A Clinton presidency isn’t the only thing Weiner lost due to his pervy online personas. 
 
 The Queens Democrat resigned from Congress in 2011 after a lurid sexting scandal involving a crotch shot that he posted on Twitter. 
 
 A testy Weiner insisted to reporters at the time that his account had been hacked. But days later, he came clean and resigned. 
 
 He later admitted during a press conference to having carried on inappropriate online relationships with at least a half dozen women. 
 
 Two years later, he attempted a political comeback and ran for New York City mayor, but his bid imploded when more online exchanges with women surfaced, including messages he traded with a woman named Sydney Leathers under the pseudonym “Carlos Danger.”
– Huma Abedin is separating from Anthony Weiner after his latest online sexcapades, this time involving a series of sexts apparently sent between Weiner and an unnamed "40-something divorcee." But a source said to be close to Abedin tells Politico the couple had already been "estranged" and more or less separated for about a year, despite still being holed up in the same Manhattan digs and sharing parenting duties for their young son. Meanwhile, Weiner foe Donald Trump says in a statement, per the New York Times, that while he applauds Abedin for making a "wise decision" to leave her husband, Hillary Clinton has been "careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information" because of his marriage. "Who knows what he learned and who he told?" Trump said. Reaction on Twitter to the man who lived by Twitter and metaphorically died by Twitter—Weiner has apparently deactivated or deleted his Twitter account—has been firing back and forth Monday faster than someone can post a scandalous selfie. Check out a few in our photo gallery that stand out (and scroll through Twitter for a seemingly endless stream of more).