Lawyers for disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner claim that the teenage girl to whom he sent explicit messages wanted to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Weiner’s lawyers said that Weiner never sought out teenage girls, The Associated Press reported. But they admitted that Weiner’s acts were “born of deep sickness.”

“He responded to the victim’s request for sexually explicit messages not because she was a teenager but in spite of it,” the lawyers said.

Weiner is to be sentenced on Sept. 25. He pled guilty in May to federal charges of transmitting sexual material to a minor.

The former Democratic congressman’s lawyers said that the investigation into Weiner was improperly injected into the presidential election.