By LARRY NEUMEISTER
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) - Former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner will appear in federal court Friday to face criminal charges in connection with an investigation of his online communications with a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina.

The Democrat will appear in court at 11 a.m., the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan said. Prosecutors declined to immediately release additional details about the charges against him.

The FBI began investigating Weiner in September after the North Carolina girl told a tabloid news site that she and the disgraced former politician had exchanged lewd messages for several months.

She also accused him of asking her to undress on camera.

The investigation led FBI agents to seize his laptop computer, which led to the discovery of a new cache of emails that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had sent to Huma Abedin, Weiner's wife.

In 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 election loss to Republican Donald Trump on Comey's announcement.

Weiner's lawyer, Arlo Devlin Brown, didn't immediately return a message Friday.

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Associated Press writer Tom Hays contributed to this report.

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