An FEC employee was found to have downloaded thousands of pornographic materials to his work laptops over the course of four years, according to a report from the Office of the Inspector General for the FEC. Shutterstock/Mark Van Scyoc
A paralegal specialist for the Federal Election Commission was found to have downloaded thousands of pornographic materials to his work laptops over the course of four years, according to a report released Thursday from the FEC’s Office of the Inspector General.
Nearly two years after initiating an investigation, the Office of the Inspector General reported that the employee was found to be in violation of agency policies and federal regulation by using federal property from 2018 to 2022 for unauthorized activities in “using his government-issued laptops to view and/or transfer inappropriate material from his personal cell phone to a flash drive,” the report said.
Those materials included five video clips on a shared FEC drive that “featured a nude female performing various sexually suggestive acts” and about 125 gigabytes of inappropriate content, including 8,166 “sexually explicit or suggestive images,” adult tourism guides to search for sex workers in Costa Rica, Italy, Mexico, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, and 687 videos of inappropriate material, defined as “fully or partially nude persons and/or persons engaged in pornographic, sexually explicit or sexually suggestive acts.”
The forensic analysis of a 2017 laptop for the employee also indicated “at least 42 cameras, USB flash drives or similar devices had been connected to the laptop” and that inappropriate material was uploaded as far back as as of Nov. 21, 2018, during his scheduled work hours.
The subject denied inappropriate use of the 2017 laptop but admitted to being responsible for the content on the shared drive and a 2021 government laptop. The 2017 laptop was found to have inappropriate files created as recently as May 2021 through July 2021, including “72 pornographic videos, pictures of nude persons and inappropriate animated drawings.”
“He responded that he had removed anything personal with a flash drive and did not disclose the existence of inappropriate material on that laptop,” the report said. “However … digital forensic review identified thousands of files that contained inappropriate material organized in hundreds of folders on the laptop.”
The person resigned around June 20, 2022, the report said.
The Office of the Inspector General initially issued its report on Aug. 10, 2022 but withheld publication of the summary “at the request of external law enforcement personnel pending criminal investigation.”
The investigation found sexually explicit images that were potentially unlawful and turned them over to law enforcement for potential criminal charges. On Dec. 11, 2023, the Office of the Inspector General reported that local law enforcement closed the criminal case due to “insufficient evidence.”
The report recommended that the FEC review policies and practices around the use of external USBs and the agency-established VPN, along with considering conducting routine scans of its equipment to “detect inappropriate material on government-issued devices.”
The FEC, which enforces federal campaign finance law, employs 305 people, according to September testimony in front of the House Committee on Administration. According to its 2023 agency financial report, the FEC’s net cost of operations were about $82.8 million for its 2023 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.
The FEC declined to comment.