FILE - In this July 24, 2013, file photo, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner leaves his apartment building in New York. Weiner will appear in federal court, Friday, May 19, 2017, to face criminal... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this July 24, 2013, file photo, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner leaves his apartment building in New York. Weiner will appear in federal court, Friday, May 19, 2017, to face criminal... (Associated Press) 
 
 Key events in the saga of Anthony Weiner, the former New York congressman who pleaded guilty Friday to transmitting sexual material to a minor: 
 
 ___ 
 
 1998 
 
 Nov. 3: Weiner, a Democrat, is elected to Congress. 
 
 ___ 
 
 2005 
 
 Sept 13: Weiner comes in second in a bid for the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City. 
 
 ___ 
 
 2010 
 
 July 10: Weiner weds Huma Abedin, a close aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Former President Bill Clinton officiates. 
 
 ___ 
 
 2011 
 
 May 27: A lewd photograph of a man's underwear-clad crotch is sent from Weiner's Twitter account, and then is quickly taken down. 
 
 May 29: A spokesman says Weiner's accounts were hacked and calls the burgeoning social media scandal "a distraction." 
 
 June 6: Weiner tearfully admits to sending the lewd photo and then lying repeatedly to protect himself. He refuses to resign. 
 
 June 11: Weiner seeks a temporary leave of absence from the House while he seeks professional treatment. A spokeswoman says he will focus on "becoming a better husband and healthier person." 
 
 June 16: Weiner says he is resigning from Congress during a news conference in Brooklyn interrupted by hecklers. Weiner apologizes "for the personal mistakes I have made and the embarrassment I have caused." 
 
 ___ 
 
 2013 
 
 May 22: Weiner launches his re-entry into the world of politics with a run for New York City mayor, asking voters for a second chance. 
 
 July 22: With Weiner leading in the polls, a gossip website posts sexually explicit messages it says were exchanged between Weiner and a woman later identified as Indiana native Sydney Leathers. The woman claims Weiner used the alias "Carlos Danger" for their exchanges. 
 
 July 23: Weiner says he won't drop out of mayoral race, saying at a news conference: "This is entirely behind me." 
 
 Sept. 10: Weiner finishes fifth in Democratic mayoral primary. 
 
 ___ 
 
 2016 
 
 Aug. 28: The New York Post publishes photos the newspaper says Weiner sent the previous year to a "40-something" divorced woman. One bulging-underwear shot shows his and Abedin's toddler son cuddling next to him. 
 
 Aug. 29: Abedin says she is separating from Weiner. 
 
 Sept. 21: The DailyMail.com publishes an interview with a 15-year-old girl who claims she had sexually explicit online text and video exchanges with Weiner. Weiner acknowledges communications but also claims he's been the subject of a hoax. 
 
 Oct. 28: In a letter to Congress, then-FBI Director James Comey says his agency is investigating whether there is classified information in newly discovered emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now the Democratic presidential nominee. A U.S. official with knowledge of the case tells The Associated Press the emails prompting the new FBI review came from a separate sexting probe of Weiner. Federal authorities in New York and North Carolina had been investigating online communications between Weiner and a 15-year-old girl. 
 
 ___ 
 
 2017 
 
 May 19: Weiner pleads guilty to criminal charges in connection with his online communications with the 15-year-old girl. ||||| Former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner leaves Federal court, Friday, May 19, 2017, in New York. Weiner pleaded guilty to transmitting sexual material to a minor. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) (Associated Press) 
 
 NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, whose penchant for sexting strangers ended his political career and sparked a probe that upended the presidential race, pleaded guilty Friday to a sex charge, tearfully apologizing for communications with a 15-year-old girl that he said destroyed his "life's dream in public service." 
 
 Weiner, who could go to prison, pleaded guilty to a single count of transmitting obscene material to a minor. He admitted exchanging online messages with the girl beginning in January 2015 and "sharing explicit images and encouraging her to engage in sexually explicit conduct." 
 
 "I have a sickness, but I do not have an excuse," he said. 
 
 In court, the 52-year-old former Democratic congressman paused repeatedly as he fought back tears and tried to compose himself. He said he knew the texting was "as morally wrong as it was unlawful." 
 
 Pleading to the charge, which requires him to register as a sex offender, could bring a sentence of up to 10 years. But Weiner is likely to serve a much shorter term if he is sentenced to prison. He signed a plea agreement with prosecutors in which he agreed not to appeal any sentence between 21 and 27 months in prison. His lawyer can request leniency at a sentencing scheduled for Sept. 8. 
 
 Wearing his wedding ring and a dark blue suit with a maroon tie, Weiner read from a prepared statement after U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska addressed him: "Tell me what you did, sir." 
 
 He said he "compulsively sought attention from women who contacted me on social media" beginning with his service in Congress and continuing through the first half of last year. 
 
 "I engaged with many of them in both sexual and nonsexual conversation," he said. "These destructive impulses brought great devastation to my family and friends and destroyed my life's dream in public service. Yet I remained in denial even as the world around me fell apart." 
 
 Weiner said he began getting mental health treatment in the fall, when he said he "came to grips for the first time with the depths of my sickness." He said he continues to follow the treatment daily. 
 
 "I had hit bottom," he said. "Through treatment I found the courage to take a moral inventory of my defects." 
 
 Weiner apologized to "everyone I have hurt," including the girl he "mistreated so badly." 
 
 Finished speaking, he wiped his eyes with tissues. 
 
 Weiner was already in federal custody ahead of the hearing, which lasted less than a half hour. Afterward, he shook hands with prosecutors, telling them: "Thanks, guys. I appreciate your service." 
 
 He then went down the courthouse elevator surrounded by his lawyers and court officers and left the building. He said nothing to reporters. His wife, Huma Abedin, was not in court. 
 
 Abedin, a top aide to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton last year, separated from Weiner in September after revelations he had sent more sexually charged messages online. 
 
 That same month, the FBI began investigating Weiner after the North Carolina girl told the news website DailyMail.com that she and Weiner had exchanged lewd messages for several months. 
 
 She also accused him of asking her to undress on camera. As part of his plea, Weiner agreed to forfeit his iPhone. 
 
 The investigation led FBI agents to seize his laptop computer, which led to the discovery of a new cache of emails that Clinton had sent to Abedin. 
 
 In late October, just days before the election, FBI Director James Comey stunned the country by announcing that his agency was reopening its closed investigation into Clinton's handling of State Department business on a private email server so it could analyze the newly discovered correspondence. 
 
 That inquiry was brief. Comey announced shortly before the election that the new emails contained nothing to change his view that Clinton could not be charged with a crime. But Clinton partly blamed her loss to Republican Donald Trump on Comey's announcement. 
 
 Weiner, who represented New York in Congress from 1999 to 2011, resigned after revelations that he was sending sexually explicit messages to multiple women. 
 
 He ran for New York City mayor in 2013 and was leading several polls until it was revealed he had continued his questionable behavior. His failed mayoral bid was the subject of the documentary "Weiner." ||||| 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. ||||| NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner admitted exchanging sexually explicit text messages with a teenage girl and pleaded guilty to a charge of transferring obscene material to a minor. 
 
 Here is the full prepared statement he read in court Friday: 
 
 “Beginning with my service in Congress and continuing into the first half of last year, I have compulsively sought attention from women who contacted me on social media, and I engaged with many of them in both sexual and non-sexual conversation. These destructive impulses brought great devastation to family and friends, and destroyed my life’s dream of public service. And yet I remained in denial even as the world around me fell apart. 
 
 In late January 2016, I was contacted by and began exchanging online messages with a stranger who said that she was a high school student and who I understood to be 15 years old. Through approximately March 2016, I engaged in obscene communications with this teenager, including sharing explicit images and encouraging her to engage in sexually explicit conduct, just as I had done and continued to do with adult women. I knew this was as morally wrong as it was unlawful. 
 
 This fall, I came to grips for the first time with the depths of my sickness. I had hit bottom. I entered intensive treatment, found the courage to take a moral inventory of my defects, and began a program of recovery and mental health treatment that I continue to follow every day. 
 
 I accept full responsibility for my conduct. I have a sickness, but I do not have an excuse. I apologize to everyone I have hurt. I apologize to the teenage girl, whom I mistreated so badly. I am committed to making amends to all those I have harmed. Thank you.” ||||| These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| 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.”
– Anthony Weiner has an unfortunate new title to go with "disgraced congressman." From now on, he'll also be a registered sex offender. Weiner appeared in federal court on Friday and pleaded guilty to a charge of transmitting sexual material to a minor, reports the New York Daily News. "I have a sickness, but I do not have an excuse," Weiner said in confessing to sending sexual images to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. While reading his statement, he "quickly dissolved into tears," reports the New York Times. And he might yet end up in jail. Related coverage: Divorce: The New York Post reports that Huma Abedin also filed for divorce from Weiner on Friday. It's uncontested, suggesting no fight is expected over assets or custody of their son. What he said: CBS News has the full text of his court statement here. Prison: Weiner faces up to 10 years when he is sentenced in September, but don't bet on it. Prosecutors said 21 to 27 months would be "fair and appropriate," and the AP notes that Weiner agreed not to appeal any sentence of that length. He also could be spared jail altogether. Keeping track: Having trouble remembering all the Weiner scandals? This timeline of his career from the AP might help. Affecting an election: If Hillary Clinton blames James Comey for her loss, then she should be blaming Weiner, too. CNN lays out how his sexting got tangled up in her email trouble. How sad: Amber Phillips assesses it all at the Washington Post, including the question of why on earth Weiner and Abedin allowed a documentary to be made about them. The "sad" Weiner story is not just "one of the weirdest political stories of the social media age," she writes. It's "guffaw-worthy. Cynical. Just plain puzzling. Gross. Criminal. And somehow totally impactful." Moving on: At CNN, Chris Cillizza makes a plea likely to have plenty of support: "Now, can we please agree to just stop talking about Weiner?"