Another Republican Senate candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump is facing scrutiny about giving a plea deal to a man accused of sexually abusing children.
Montana GOP Senate nominee Kurt Alme oversaw a case as the state's U.S. attorney involving tribal police officer Mychal Thomas Damon, who investigators said admitted to molesting a 6-year-old girl and was indicted by a grand jury on one count of abusive sexual contact with an individual under 12, but Alme's office filed a plea deal that reduced the charge and penalty, reported HuffPost.
The grand jury's indicted charge carried a maximum punishment of a lifetime in prison, a $250,000 fine and no less than five years to a lifetime of supervised release.
But Alme's office agreed to reduce the charge to felony child abuse, raising the victim's age from under 12 to under 14, and he was sentenced to time served — 324 days — and two years of supervised release, and he did not have to register as a sex offender.
Alme's office declined 64 percent of sexual assault cases during part of his tenure, which he attributed in 2019 to weak evidence. His campaign has accused Democrats of "twisting the facts."
Trump-endorsed Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton, the state's attorney general, has faced similar questions over his office negotiating a plea deal for Waco attorney Adam Hoffman, who was originally charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child after a friend of his son's testified the man had abused him repeatedly starting in third grade.
After a 2025 trial ended in a hung jury, Paxton's prosecutors offered Hoffman a deal reducing the charge to misdemeanors, including indecent assault, without specifying the victim's age — again avoiding sex offender registration. Hoffman initially faced one day in jail under the deal, though the presiding judge, Roy Sparkman, balked and ultimately imposed 60 days, but Hoffman was released after 29 to 30 days under good-behavior credit.
Paxton's office has said the decision was made to spare the child victim a second trial, citing the boy's own wishes.
The Hoffman case has become a centerpiece of Democratic opponent James Talarico's Senate campaign, who has called it an "Epstein-style sweetheart deal" and demanded Paxton release internal communications. Paxton has so far declined to answer reporters' questions directly, including during a videotaped encounter in which he walked away in silence. PolitiFact rated Talarico's core claims about the deal "Mostly True."
