The Daily Populous Sunday September 28th, 2025 night edition
Authored by apnews.com and submitted by IMSLI

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A Republican member of the South Carolina House who prosecutors say used the screen name “joebidennnn69” agreed Friday to plead guilty to distributing sexual abuse material involving children.

RJ May signed court papers to change his plea a few days after a hearing where prosecutors laid out how they would present their evidence in May’s trial next month. May, who does not have a law degree, is acting as his own attorney.

The Republican, who resigned earlier this year, is accused of using “joebidennnn69” to exchange 220 different files of toddlers and young children involved in sex acts on the Kik social media network for about five days in spring 2024, according to court documents that graphically detailed the videos.

May, 38, is pleading guilty to five counts and faces five to 20 years in prison on each charge. He will have to register as a sex offender and could be fined up to $250,000, according to his plea agreement.

May is scheduled to be in federal court Monday to officially change his plea. He has been in jail since June after a judge refused bond following his arrest.

May acted as his own attorney at a hearing that included prosecutors showing charts explaining in stark, factual ways what was on each video May is charged with distributing.

During the hearing, May made arguments to the judge to throw out the warrant used to search his home, laptop and mobile devices. She had not ruled on the request before May approached prosecutors about pleading guilty Wednesday.

May also was trying to keep out any evidence about whether he used a fake name to travel to Colombia three times. Prosecutors said they found videos on his laptop of him allegedly having sex with three women. A Homeland Security agent testified the women appeared to be underage and were paid. U.S. agents have not been able to locate the women.

Prosecutors said they linked May to uploading and downloading the child sexual abuse videos by showing he multitasked, emailing work files, making phone calls and doing web searches as part of his job as a political consultant as he was on Kik asking for “Bad moms. Bad dads. Bad pre teens.”

May was in his third term in the South Carolina House when he was arrested. After his election in 2020, he helped create the Freedom Caucus, a group of the House’s most conservative members who say mainstream House Republicans aren’t the true conservative heart of the GOP. He also helped the campaigns of Republicans running against GOP House incumbents.

“We as legislators have an obligation to insure that our children have no harm done to them,” May said in January 2024 on the House floor during a debate on transgender care for minors.

nonononookfine on September 27th, 2025 at 06:26 UTC »

Name names. This is RJ May. Here is an article from the South Carolina Daily Gazette. Ex-SC Rep. RJ May to plead guilty to sending child sex abuse videos.

COLUMBIA — Former state Rep. RJ May will plead guilty to sending videos of children being sexually abused, according to a Friday court filing.

The trial for May, a West Columbia Republican and founding member of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus in the South Carolina House, was expected to begin Oct. 9.

Though not a lawyer, May chose to represent himself, preparing his case from the Edgefield County jail cell where he has remained since his June arrest. The campaign consultant resigned his House seat in August.

May agreed to plead guilty to five of the 10 charges against him. Prosecutors dismissed the remaining five, essentially halving the maximum penalty he faced, according to the plea deal.

Each charge carries a prison sentence of five to 20 years.

After leaving prison, the 38-year-old father of two will be required to register as a sex offender. He could also be required to pay fines of up to $250,000 for each charge, plus around $40,000 in other fees, according to the agreement.

May last appeared in court Wednesday. Over three hours, May and prosecutors argued a handful of motions before U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie for the upcoming trial.

None of the messages May sent from jail from his monitored tablet before the hearing, which were obtained through an open records request, suggested May planned to plead guilty.

But after the hearing, he met with prosecutors and signed the deal.

Court filings show Scott Matthews, an assistant U.S. attorney, signed off on Friday. Currie then scheduled a plea hearing for Monday afternoon. May’s case

The case began in May 2024 with a tip from messaging app Kik that an account under the name “joebidennnn69” had sent videos of children being sexually abused. Prosecutors tracked the account to the internet at May’s home.

Between March 31 and April 4, 2024, in a “single five-day child pornography spree,” the joebidennnn69 account sent more than 1,100 messages — 479 of them contained videos of children being sexually abused, prosecutors wrote in court filings.

Saved to the app were 220 different videos depicting sexual abuse of children, including toddlers and infants, investigators determined through a search warrant.

In many of those conversations, users asked each other for their preferences or requested certain content, then spent hours sending batches of videos that ranged from two seconds to just over two minutes, according to eight chat logs prosecutors included in recent court filings.

More than 430 of the messages containing videos were sent over May’s home Wi-Fi, according to court filings.

Another 19 came through the wireless data on May’s cellphone. A virtual private network, or VPN, encrypted the location data of 28 videos, though prosecutors noted May had a VPN app installed on his phone.

People in 18 states and five countries — the U.K., the Netherlands, Romania, Australia and Canada — received the videos and responded with their own, according to court filings.

A nurse in Oklahoma City is facing charges of being one of the 46 recipients, prosecutors have said.

May previously contended in court filings and messages sent from his jail cell that the case against him was flimsy because investigators found no videos saved to his phone or laptop.

That’s “very, very common,” testified Britton Lorenzen, a special agent for the Department of Homeland Security’s division investigating internet crimes against children. Many people who have such illicit videos keep them saved to the cloud or to other apps, she said during his June detention hearing.

Attorney Dayne Phillips, who represented May only for that hearing, suggested an unnamed political enemy hacked into May’s home Wi-Fi using a password visible in the background of a photo May’s wife posted on Facebook.

Investigators found other evidence linking May to the account sending the videos, Lorenzen said.

Among the commonly used phrases saved to his phone’s data was the “joebidennnn69” username, as well as an alternate email used to set up the Kik account, she said.

May’s phone received hundreds of notifications from the Kik app during the five days the account was active. May deleted Kik, along with other messaging apps, on April 4, 2024, according to court filings. The next day, Kik suspended the joebidennnn69 account for sending videos of children being sexually abused, prosecutors said.

Activity on May’s laptop corresponded several times to conversations joebidennnn69 was having over Kik, prosecutors said.

May also downloaded and registered for apps suggested to joebidennnn69 by other users sending videos of child sexual abuse. The apps — Telegram, Mega and Sessions — are based overseas, making it impossible for investigators to get search warrants for any messages exchanged on them, prosecutors said during hearings. Wednesday’s hearing

During the Wednesday hearing, May asked Currie to throw out the search warrants that allowed prosecutors to seize devices from his home and go through the data on his phone.

May argued that Lorenzen, the special agent, gave conflicting testimony as to whether she expected to find child sexual abuse videos on his devices.

Prosecutors disagreed, saying May took her words out of context. Currie made no decision Wednesday, saying she would rule a week later, during a second scheduled hearing.

May also asked for a change of venue, pointing to dozens of news articles written about his case. Currie pushed off that decision until later, though she seemed uninterested in moving the trial to one of the other federal courthouses in the state.

The jury pool consisted of more than 1 million people, prosecutors said in court filings.

Currie suggested that fewer people than May thinks actually read news about his case and even fewer would remember it or be biased specifically because of what they read.

Also at issue was whether prosecutors could reference Eric Rentling. Prosecutors say that’s the alias he used to arrange meetups with women in Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia.

He made three trips to the South American country in 2023 and 2024. May used the Rentling name when signing up for apps suggested to him over Kik, according to court filings.

May also used the Rentling Facebook account to message women and search for political opponents while simultaneously exchanging explicit Kik messages, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors planned to show GoPro footage of May looking in the mirror during trips he arranged as Rentling, proving they were the same person, attorneys said during the Wednesday court hearing.

Currie made no ruling on that issue, either, though she said she was inclined to allow references to Rentling. She did ask prosecutors to pare down the hundreds of messages they planned to show jurors between May and other Kik users, often sending videos back and forth.

octatone on September 27th, 2025 at 05:33 UTC »

Offbeat? More like “on brand”.

Bokbreath on September 27th, 2025 at 04:37 UTC »

remember. every accusation is a confession