Former U.S. Congressional Staffer Pleads Guilty to Receiving Child Pornography

A former congressional staffer pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of receiving child pornography, announced Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas and Special Agent in Charge Thomas M. Class Sr. of the FBI’s Dallas Field Office.

James Maines Jr., 54, of Mesquite, Texas, pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge David L. Horan of the Northern District of Texas in Dallas to one count of knowingly receiving child pornography.  Maines is scheduled to be sentenced on March 16, 2016, before U.S. District Court Judge Ed Kinkeade of the Northern District of Texas.

In connection with his guilty plea, Maines admitted that in November 2012, he attempted to forward five child exploitation images from his email account to his U.S. House of Representatives email account.  Maines also admitted that he had received these and other child exploitation images via the Internet.  Forensic analysis of Maines’s computer revealed a number of child exploitation images, some of which Maines had downloaded as early as 2004.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Camille Sparks of the Northern District of Texas and Trial Attorney Mi Yung Park of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) are prosecuting this case.  The FBI’s Dallas Field Office investigated the case with the assistance of the FBI’s Washington, D.C., Field Office.