Federal prosecutors have revealed new and even more disturbing details in their case against Ruben A. Verastigui, a former Senate Republican Conference aide who was charged on Saturday with distributing, receiving and possessing child pornography for 11 months leading up to February. In a group chat with 18 others, Verastigui allegedly traded child porn and graphically discussed his preference for videos depicting child abuse. In a detention memo filed in D.C. federal court on Tuesday, prosecutors revealed that Verastigui also discussed “in great detail” how much he enjoyed seeing children be abused and killed. Chat logs show he and another group member talked about traveling somewhere with few cops so they could kill a child, the memo says. “Verastigui’s release would put the public and children everywhere at-risk,” prosecutors argued.
Verastigui, who worked for pro-life groups and designed social media ads for Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, was working for the GOP at the time of the alleged offending.
