While this is embarrassing, I don’t know if it is illegal. Of course, just because conduct is not illegal does not mean that it is okay to do it. I think it was immoral and wrong. He deserves to be shamed and ridiculed. As for criminal punishment, we need to look at the laws in all jurisdictions involved. Probably Delaware; Washington, DC; New York…maybe Virginia or Maryland (depending on whether Weiner has a residence in the DC area in either of those states that he used while making contact with the teen).

I have not looked at this entire thread to see if anyone is an expert on the criminal laws in these jurisdictions. Wikipedia has a good article on this.http://en.wikipedia.org

I used to know the Ohio law better (I was an assistant prosecutor once and I handled these types of crimes); it looks like Ohio law may have changed in the last 11 years. Ohio also had a crime called “contributing to the unruliness or delinquency of a child” that could be used in cases where the statutory rape law was not applicable. This crime is only a misdemeanor. It is possible that the states where Weiner was active may have a similar criminal offense to charge him with.