Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former New York mayoral candidate, has been jailed for nearly two years after admitting he “sexted” an underage girl.

Mr Weiner had previously admitted he sent sexually explicit messages to the 15-year-old from North Carolina.

He dropped his head and wept as the sentence was announced by the judge in a New York courtroom on Monday morning.

“I was a very sick man for a long period of time, but I am responsible for the damage I have done,” he told the judge, according to Bloomberg. “I have no excuse.”

Mr Weiner, who served as a congressman for New York between 1999 and 2011, had faced a sentence of up to ten years in prison. He had sought to be spared from prison and receive probation instead.

But prosecutors successfully argued for a significant prison sentence to end his “tragic cycle” of sexting. He will also be ordered to register as a sex offender.

The FBI’s investigation into Mr Weiner became a major part of the 2016 US presidential election when agents found a series of emails between his estranged wife Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton.

The discovery prompted then-FBI director James Comey to reopen a probe into Ms Clinton’s use of a private email server.

The investigation was dropped two days before election day, but the Clinton campaign argued it proved pivotal in her eventual defeat to Donald Trump.