Trump Official Pleads Guilty To Child Porn Charge, Is Sentenced to Prison
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Adam Hagerman, a former Commerce Department official in the Trump administration was sentenced to a five-and-a-half year prison term after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography, federal prosecutors announced last week in a court filing. Under the terms of his plea deal, Adam Hageman was also sentenced to five years of parole after release and a mandatory requirement to register as a sex offender.
Hageman, 26, was arrested in November of 2020 after he was found to be a member of an online group chat dedicated to sharing images of child sexual abuse.
The site’s name on which the discussions allegedly took place has not been publicly disclosed, but according to an affidavit filed by prosecutors, Hageman shared with members at least one video of a child being molested, claimed to have sexually abused a child as young as 15, and indicated that he wanted to sexually assault children between the ages of 12 and 16 years old. Prosecutors asserted that they found “dozens” of child sexual abuse videos on Hageman’s phone after federal authorities executed a search warrant against him.
According to court documents, Hageman also requested that the members of the group find “a dad with a young kid he will rent out to us.”
Before working for the Commerce Department, Hageman lived in Arizona and worked at Turning Point USA, a Christian supremacist organization which markets far-right political views to high school students. He appears to have established a connection with the group while a student at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
Though not stated by federal officials, the evidence suggests that Hageman, who was working as a political appointee in an event management role for the Commerce Department at the time of his arrest, was in the same group with a Republican political operative, Ruben Verastigui, who was sentenced in April to 12 years in prison following a guilty plea. Politico first reported the possible connection.
In separate court filings, prosecutors stated that their investigations of both Hageman and Verastigui began around June 12, 2020. Both men were said to be in a group with “at least 18 members” and Homeland Security special agent Raymond Abruzzese was an investigator in both cases. Both men also lived in Arizona, where officials said each investigation began.
According to Verastigui’s guilty plea, he asked group members for videos of babies being raped, saying that they were his “absolute favorite” and rejoiced when a clip was sent in reply.
Verastigui worked for various congressional Republican committee groups from 2018 until 2020, Politico reported. He served at the Republican National Committee from 2017 to 2018, the website reported.
Both Verastigui and Hageman had access to a number of prominent Republicans. On Instagram, Verastigui repeatedly posted photos of himself at the White House and the U.S. Capitol. Hageman was also pictured at the White House and alongside right-wing celebrities including Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), in 2020 when Cawthorn was a candidate, and former senior Trump White House official Sebastian Gorka. Hageman also posted a photo of himself with Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk.
Back in March of 2021 Politico reported:
Hageman was “an active participant, often soliciting child pornography or commenting on it,” and “invited at least one other person who he knew to be interested in child pornography and bestiality to the chat.”
The charges carry a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum of 20 years, according to prosecutors, excluding possible additional charges “for advertisement and distribution of child pornography in another district in which the penalties appear to be even higher.”
Homeland Security agents executed a search warrant at Hageman’s Washington home on Nov. 12, according to the complaint, at which point Hageman “stated that he had been saving child pornography” and provided officers with a password to access stored content on his phone. He also told authorities he’d downloaded child pornography as recently as the day before and admitted to using the unnamed app to access and download videos, the complaint says.
Hageman was taken into custody the next day.
According to the pretrial detention memo, Hageman’s phone “contained at least 33 videos that appear to contain sexually explicit depictions of children, including of prepubescent children.”
Hageman is the most recent political operative arrested on federal child pornography charges. In February, authorities arrested and charged Ruben Verastigui, a former Senate Republican staffer, with similar offenses.
Details in both men’s arrest warrants suggest they were participants in the same group that investigators began looking into last June. According to both Hageman and Verastigui’s warrants, investigators discovered a group of at least 18 individuals “who were trading child pornography on a particular website” that remains unnamed in the complaints.
Court documents show that Hageman is being held without bond. The pretrial detention memo filed by prosecutors makes an aggressive case for his continued detention, calling him a “danger to the community” and pointing to messages allegedly sent by Hageman encouraging other members of the group to assault minors, expressing his age preferences and his frustration with the pandemic for limiting his ability to expose himself to children in public bathrooms.
A Commerce Department spokesperson said that Hageman no longer works for the department and has not worked there at any point in the new administration.
An Instagram account bearing the name Adam Hageman and whose handle is the same as one mentioned in the complaint shows photos of the user on the South Lawn of the White House, standing in front of the Commerce Department seal and at the Trump International Hotel in Washington throwing a thumbs up with now-Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.).
