South Carolina state Rep RJ May accused of distributing child sexual abuse material
A Republican lawmaker in the South Carolina House has been charged with 10 counts of distributing child sexual abuse material.
RJ May was arrested on Wednesday at his home in Lexington County. His arrest on the federal charges was the culmination of a lengthy investigation into his internet activities. He appeared in federal court on Thursday.
According to an indictment, the three-term Republican used several screen names, including the one referencing former President Joe Biden - "joebidennnn69" - while exchanging CSAM files on the Kik social media network.
Kik notified the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in April 2024 of several videos containing child abuse linked to the accounts that prosecutors argue were controlled by May, according to WISTV.
During a hearing on Thursday a memo including Kik data was made public showing May's alleged account had 265 videos of child abuse associated with it. The data also included IP address data linking the account to May's home Wi-Fi network.
'Agents confirmed during surveillance of the residence, and again during the search of the residence. that the Wi-Fi at the May residence was password protected,' the indictment said. 'Thus, for the [child abuse] activity on Kik to have been conducted by someone other than May, that person would have had to know the Wi-Fi password.'
The indictment also states that a forensic analysis of May's phone found that he had deleted Kik, Telegram, Mega and Loki Messenger within seconds of each other in April 2024.
The memo further alleged that May's activity on Kik showed that he has "a sexual interest in children the same age as his own children" and a "sexual interest in incest" between young children and their parents.
'May engaged in this behavior on his cell phone and from his own home on multiple occasions, presumably without his wife's knowledge,' the memo reads. 'If he can hide this criminal activity from the person he shares a bedroom with, then he can easily hide it from any court enforcement mechanism. Furthermore, there is evidence that he has recently traveled to South America to engage in commercial sex, again presumably without his wife's knowledge that he ever even left the country. Thus, he is very likely to be able to evade detection by court enforcement of release conditions.'
The indictment did not contain additional information about the charges. If convicted, May could face between five to 20 years in prison.
Judge Shiva Hodges ordered that May remain in custody prior to his trial, according to WISTV.
Following his election to the House in 2020, May helped to create the Freedom Caucus, which organized the most conservative members of the state's House. The group has run their own candidate for House Speaker and are resistant to joining the Republican Majority Caucus because it requires a loyalty pledge.
The Freedom Caucus issued a statement on Wednesday saying they had kicked May out of the group following his arrest. May has also been suspended from his role in the South Carolina House of Representatives, according to a letter from South Carolina House Speaker Murrell Smith.
The congressman was a vocal conservative voice in the House.
'We as legislators have an obligation to insure that our children have no harm done to them,' May said in January 2024 during a debate on transgender care for minors.
The Independent has requested comment from May.
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When Madigan was born 83 years ago, his father was a cog in the Democratic machine who became a political stalwart as 13th Ward superintendent. Madigan's mother was a homemaker, and his sister was five years younger. He grew up in the Marquette Park area on the city's Southwest Side. 'My father dominated the house,' Madigan said. 'My mother was quiet and reserved.' 'In that house,' Madigan testified, 'the word 'nurturing' didn't exist. My parents never told me that they loved me. They never embraced, never hugged. That was just the condition that existed at the time.' Madigan's parents also were 'very strict' about his schoolwork, particularly after a nun saw he scored better than she expected on his fifth grade exam at St. Adrian, a Catholic grammar school, and told his parents to 'get on my case.' 'And so, as it was in those years, they got out the whips, and they went to work,' Madigan testified. 'So I became a more diligent student.' In Madigan's seventh and eighth grade years, yet another nun urged him to go to St. Ignatius for high school, one of a handful on his father's approved list, and then, after high school, going to the University of Notre Dame became a 'foregone conclusion.' Along the way, Madigan held jobs typical of a family embedded in the Democratic machine, which by 1955 was beginning to be run by Mayor Richard J. Daley. He worked a couple of summers as a junior laborer at a nearby Chicago Park District nursery when he was around 14 or 15, helping to grow trees and bushes for the park system. He then landed a job on a 'dirt truck' under his father's jurisdiction, picking up discarded mattresses and broken refrigerators placed on curbs and scooping dirt piled up by street sweepers and shoveling it into a truck to haul to a dump. Eventually, though, he convinced his father to be reassigned to a garbage truck, a job that came with a 'nightly interrogation' since his father supervised ward services. 'This became difficult,' Madigan testified. 'And my father had been an alcoholic who had quit drinking. He carried an anger problem, short fuse. And so when something went wrong or something went against his wishes, why, there would be a display of anger. And if anybody happened to be in the line of fire, why, it was not a pleasant experience. And in my case, why, it just — it just had me develop a habit where I never wanted to disagree with him, So if I'm in a conversation with him, he's not happy, he's disparaging me, I would just say, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, sir, yes, sir, yeah, yeah, yeah,' just to get out of the conversation.' The vignette appeared to be aimed at explaining why Madigan habitually gave brief 'yeah' or 'mmhm' answers to questions, such as an attempt to diffuse prosecutors' arguments that his innocuous phrases condoned alleged misdeeds. Madigan also testified his father's alcoholism played into a life lesson once when the young Madigan came home around 2 or 3 a.m. 'greatly under the influence of alcohol.' 'My father greeted me at the door, and I got a good, solid slap right across the side of my face,' Madigan said. Later that morning, Madigan's mother sent him to his father's office for a 'very somber meeting.' 'My father really never talked about drinking until this meeting. … He was very concerned that I might have the same problem that he had,' Madigan explained. 'And he extracted two promises out of me. Number one, never drink on an empty stomach. Make sure you have some food in your stomach before you drink. Number two, never drink before sundown. Never drink before sundown. And so I told him I would abide by that, and I have.' Advice from his father shaped many other parts of Madigan's thinking, from his longtime support of organized labor to making an extraordinary political connection while attending law school at Loyola University. In between his first and second year in law school, he worked as an assistant to the 13th Ward alderman, handling often angry and frustrated constituents with requests that ranged from needing a tree trimmed to getting their garbage picked up on time. 'It left me with a lifetime understanding that people like myself involved in government and politics should strive to be responsive to the citizens of the states, citizens of the nation,' Madigan said. He later worked as a law clerk in the city of Chicago Law Department, a spot right next to the office of Mayor Daley. 'We developed an acquaintance relationship,' Madigan said, adding: 'He knew my father.' When Madigan graduated from law school in 1967, he took his first job as a lawyer in the same city Law Department. He then landed a job as a hearing officer at the Illinois Commerce Commission, which oversees utilities. But he soon learned a lesson in politics when a Republican committeeman started pulled strings. 'I was a Democrat, and I was involved with the local Democratic organizations in the 13th Ward,' Madigan testified. 'That organization issued a newsletter, and I wrote a column for the Young Democrats. The newsletter fell into the hands of the local Republican ward committeeman, who also happened to be the Republican Cook County chairman.' But instead of getting fired immediately, as the GOP official wanted, the ICC chairman gave Madigan time to find another job. He landed back in the city law department, once again as part of the Daley administration. Madigan's political career would soon rise. He won a vote among precinct committeemen in 1969 to replace the 13th Ward's Democratic committeeman, who had died. He won election as a delegate to the state's constitutional convention, which crafted the 1970 Illinois Constitution, which is still in place today. One of his fellow delegates was Richard M. Daley, Hizzoner's son and a future Chicago mayor himself. Thanks to Democratic Party slating, Madigan soon won his House seat for the first time in 1970, and he spent his first term 'not active,' but rather 'just observing and attempting to learn.' After Madigan's father died, the new lawmaker befriended a gregarious veteran, Rep. E.J. 'Zeke' Giorgi, a Rockford Democrat who excelled in retail politics. 'My personality was very strident,' Madigan said of his early days as a lawmaker, 'and I didn't do well interacting with the other representatives.' Giorgi's 'personality was completely different than mine,' said Madigan, an understatement to anyone who knew the secretive Madigan and the always-talkative Giorgi. 'He was open, outgoing, did very well at relating to other people, understanding other people, and being able to work cooperatively with them. So he gave me an education as to how I should change my methods and how I should conduct myself differently than I had when I first arrived.' Madigan said the most important lesson he learned from Giorgi was that 'it's really important to strive to know and understand other people. You know, it's one thing to have your own ideas. But in life, but in particular in a legislative body, it's really important that you understand that everybody comes there with their own ideas. They're entitled to support positions that they support, and everybody should be given due respect.' Madigan told jurors he 'developed a lifetime friendship' with Giorgi, who is known as the father of the Illinois lottery and the House champion of riverboat gambling. It became clear in Madigan's testimony that experiences with his father and with Giorgi influenced how he handled the speakership. While establishing himself in Springfield during the mid-1970s, Madigan also met a woman who would become his wife, Shirley, a former flight attendant from Oregon, who worked at a Chicago law office where he would stop to discuss politics with a friend. 'It was a real quick romance,' Madigan said, 'and we got married, and we developed a family of three immediately because she had a daughter from a prior marriage who was about 10 or 11 years old at the time.' Madigan embraced the dual role of being a husband to Shirley and also a father to her daughter, Lisa, as they settled into the 13th Ward's West Lawn neighborhood. 'Shirley had gone through a very difficult divorce, a very contentious relationship with her first husband,' Madigan said. 'And my view was that … I would treat Lisa as my daughter, that I was not the biological father, but I had married Shirley. And, you know, I understood at the get-go that this was a — this is a dual package here. And so I just took on the parental responsibilities.' Madigan testified about Lisa's 'contentious relationship with her biological father' and the time he heard her crying while talking on the phone. 'I took the phone out of her hands, and her biological father was on the phone shouting at her,' Madigan said. 'And the language was so vile that I don't want to repeat it, but he was using the 'F' word as part of his expression.' Madigan testified he told Lisa that she never again had to see or talk to her biological father. Madigan said he received numerous threatening letters but avoided a physical confrontation with him, a point the Madigan team used to support the argument that he was non-confrontational on thorny matters. A Tribune review of courtroom transcripts revealed Madigan's deep reach into his background drew significant questions from Judge Blakey outside of the earshot of the jury and the courtroom audience. Blakey, in a private sidebar with lawyers outside of jurors' earshot, wondered about the relevance of Madigan testifying about 'some emotional incident' from decades ago. Ultimately, though, Blakey allowed Madigan's team to use the story to demonstrate the longtime speaker's 'approach toward confrontation or how he interacts with people and how he responds, certainly those things are relevant.' But Blakey gave a warning: 'That's not a blank check to bring in every possible experience.' The Madigan family grew as he and Shirley had three additional children, Nicole, Tiffany and Andrew, all of whom are now adults. Madigan adopted Lisa. Over the years, Lisa Madigan drew the most political interest. A former state senator who became Illinois' attorney general in 2003, she looked on track to be the first woman to be governor of Illinois. But that expectation took an abrupt turn in July 2013 when she sent a blast email that shook the state's political landscape. Despite raising money at a faster clip than incumbent Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, she said she would not challenge him. Why? 'I feel strongly that the state would not be well served by having a governor and speaker of the House from the same family and have never planned to run for governor if that would be the case. With speaker Madigan planning to continue in office, I will not run for governor.' Ever since, many have pondered what would have happened if the speaker had stepped aside at that point. Instead, Lisa Madigan ran for reelection as attorney general, completed her fourth term and joined a private law firm. In her final days as attorney general, she would swear in her father to the speakership during a festive ceremony in 2019. 'Congratulations,' she said. 'You're the speaker again.' That would be Mike Madigan's last term as speaker before his own caucus ousted him two years later as the federal investigation began to close in. The Madigan & Getzendanner law firm also took center stage in the courtroom as prosecutors sought to tie Madigan's public actions to his attempts to land business for a practice that focused on winning property tax appeals. Prosecutors used testimony from disgraced former 25th Ward Ald. Danny Solis — who chaired the City Council's zoning committee — to buttress allegations about Madigan making deals with Solis to help score real estate business for the law firm. The straitlaced Madigan testified he had no idea until news broke in January 2019 that the feds had ensnared Solis in a sordid mix of city business, campaign contributions, bribery, sex, prostitutes and Viagra pills. Federal authorities flipped Solis, who helped take down Madigan and 14th Ward Ald. Ed Burke, who spent a record 54 years on the City Council and went to prison for racketeering, bribery and extortion. One pivotal moment in the Madigan trial was a 2018 recording in which Solis told Madigan that developers the speaker wanted in his law firm's portfolio, as Solis explained, to 'understand how this works, you know, the quid pro quo, the quid pro quo.' On the phone, Madigan's reaction sounded potentially like a subtle acknowledgement. But Madigan told jurors Solis' comments caused a 'great deal of surprise and concern.' 'I decided that I wanted to have a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Solis to give me an opportunity to tell him that I would not be involved in a quid pro quo,' Madigan said. A few days later, Madigan testified that he spoke to Solis, who 'genuinely appeared to recognize that he had made a serious mistake.' In that particular allegation, one involving Madigan's alleged pressure on developers of a West Loop high-rise to give him business, the jurors acquitted him of four counts. In all, the former speaker was convicted on Feb. 12 on 10 of the 23 corruption counts he faced. Jurors deadlocked on the marquee racketeering conspiracy charge that Madigan and co-defendant Michael McClain, a ComEd lobbyist, ran the ex-speaker's government and political operations like a criminal enterprise. Jurors could not reach a consensus on any charges against McClain, who stands convicted in the separate 'ComEd Four' case. But the jury convicted Madigan on a series of allegations tied to his talking about getting Solis, a key government mole who testified at length during the trial, appointed to a cushy paid position on a state board during the same conversations in which Solis promised to help Madigan acquire business for Madigan's law firm. As he wrapped up his days of denials, Madigan's testimony provided one more glimpse into what he now was thinking: 'One of my regrets is that I ever had any time spent with Danny Solis.' Prosecutors won pivotal rulings late in the trial to present key evidence to counter the Madigan team's position that he simply sought to help people find jobs. Blakey allowed jurors to see a video of Madigan's 2009 oral history interview with the University of Illinois Chicago about how he used to handle patronage when it was legal during the 1960s and 1970s heyday of the first Mayor Daley's Democratic machine. The video showed Madigan explaining how he taught people who wanted government jobs to sell Democratic candidates to voters like a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. 'They wanted a job in the patronage system,' Madigan said. 'I would tell them, 'Yes, we can put you in a job. But you're going to work for the Democratic Party.' ' Madigan attorney Todd Pugh argued putting the recording into the trial would open a 'Pandora's box,' given that anti-patronage laws had changed the hiring landscape. Lead prosecutor Amarjeet Bhachu countered the 'reason the Pandora's box is there is because' Madigan's own direct testimony involved an 'unnecessary inquiry into what Mr. Madigan had done for 50 years.' Blakey followed up on his prior warnings: 'At multiple times, and whether it's a Pandora's box or whatever, whatever kind of box, it was … opened up on the direct testimony of the defendant.' Prosecutors also convinced Blakey to allow the infamous 'bandits' recording of Madigan and McClain talking about longtime labor leader Dennis Gannon getting a $150,000-a-year ComEd consulting contract. 'Some of these guys have made out like bandits, Mike,' Madigan told McClain as they both chuckled. Madigan's team argued the comment should have been barred because Gannon's position was not included in the charges against the ex-speaker. But Bhachu maintained it was fair because Madigan portrayed his motivation for a half-century of job recommendations as being 'solely for altruistic purposes, to help constituents.' In his own testimony, Madigan said the 'bandits' conversation with McClain had nothing at all to do with the no-work ComEd subcontractors at issue in the case. Instead, Madigan testified, they were talking about lobbyists in Springfield who would get paid big money to work six months out of the year. Prosecutors dismissed the counts against Madigan in which the jury deadlocked. Madigan is expected to appeal the sentence and request to remain free pending the outcome. The jury also deadlocked on six counts against McClain. He was convicted two years ago in the far-reaching 'ComEd Four' trial, an outgrowth of the Madigan investigation. McClain and three others also found guilty in that case are scheduled for sentencings later this summer. The government previously dropped a single count of bribery against Solis despite his own checkered history. Solis keeps his six-figure City Council pension, and Madigan's $158,000 annual pension was suspended immediately upon his conviction. In his remarks near the end of Friday's three-and-a-half-hour sentencing hearing, the judge found himself musing about Illinois' sordid history of corruption, saying he was not trying to sentence 'a social problem' but instead the single defendant who was before him in the courtroom. He also reflected on the measure of a man, acknowledging how difficult it is for politicians to achieve the level of integrity of someone like President Abraham Lincoln. 'It's really hard to be Honest Abe right?' Blakey said. 'He's a unicorn in our American history. Being great is hard. But being honest is not. Being honest is actually very easy. It's hard to commit crimes. It takes effort.' The fact that Madigan was a 'man of his word,' as he testified and as many who wrote letters of support agreed on, 'cuts both ways,' Blakey said, since he also 'kept his word with his co-conspirators and co-schemers.' In the end, Blakey said, the forces that landed Madigan in his courtroom were perplexing. 'He had no reason to do the things that he did in this case, and the fact that he is a good man and chose to do it is mystifying,' Blakey said. 'But he did it.'
