I’ve been covering the comings and goings in Washington for quite a while now, but lately, it just seems like I keep running across stories that sound as if they must have been taken from an ill-conceived Saturday Night Live skit rather than anything from reality. That was certainly the case when I read about a male staffer allegedly working for Democratic Senator Ben Cardin (and who is now unemployed) filming himself fully naked while having sex with another man in a Senate hearing room and posting the video online. The story was beyond outrageous and didn’t even seem possible, but the staffer was given the boot and it appears that this really happened. Now questions are being raised as to whether this stunt crossed the line from obscenely unprofessional conduct to criminal behavior that could lead to a prosecution. Jonathan Turley believes that it might. (Yahoo News)

An alleged congressional staffer who filmed an explicit sex tape inside a Senate hearing room could face criminal charges, one lawyer argues.

The U.S. Capitol Police told Fox News they were aware of an amateur pornographic video published by the Daily Caller on Friday, which shows someone identified as a congressional staffer, engaging in sex with another man in Hart Senate Office Building room 216.

According to the Daily Caller, the video was leaked after being “shared in a private group for gay men in politics.” The men’s identities haven’t been confirmed.

Just to get one thing out of the way up front, the former staffer is reportedly complaining that he is being “attacked for who I love.” We should be clear about that. This has nothing to do with anyone in Washington being gay, straight, bisexual, trans, or anything else. I wouldn’t differentiate if the video involved two men, two women, or a man and a woman. This is a matter of a government employee outrageously disrespecting his employer, his workplace, and the American taxpayers who formerly covered his salary. Having sex in public is still a crime in most cases (which we’ll get to in a moment). Making pornography inside the Hart Senate Building takes it to an entirely new level.

With that said, Jonathan Turley, a Fox News contributor, posted some opinions about the legal options available in this case. Among the more minor possibilities is that the production of pornography inside the workplace could be considered trespassing, depending on the identity of the staffer’s “partner” and whether they were authorized to be in that office at the time of the filming. As the J6 trials have shown us, trespassing inside the Capitol Complex can bring harsh penalties if the DOJ feels like throwing the book at you.

A more serious possibility is that the staffer’s actions could fall under D.C. code section 22-1312. That code covers “lewd, indecent, or obscene acts.”

“It is unlawful for a person, in public, to make an obscene or indecent exposure of his or her genitalia or anus, to engage in masturbation, or to engage in a sexual act as defined in § 22-3001(8). It is unlawful for a person to make an obscene or indecent sexual proposal to a minor. A person who violates any provision of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, shall be fined not more than the amount set forth in § 22-3571.01, imprisoned for not more than 90 days, or both,” the criminal code states.

Turley goes on to point out that such a charge might be called into question when seeking to determine whether or not the inside of a locked Senate committee room would be considered “in public.” We may not know for a while. The Capitol Hill Police released a statement saying they were aware of the existence of the video and are “looking into it.”

Whether charges are brought or not really isn’t the point. This appears to be yet another sign that the standards in Washington have fallen unbelievably far from what they once were or at least aspired to be. There is no question that other people have had sex inside of the Capitol Complex in the past. Some have even admitted to it in memoirs. But that was generally done in private inside someone’s office and they certainly didn’t publish videos of the action online. The seat of the federal government has been devolving into an insulting parody. What was once hailed as the home of the world’s greatest deliberative body is turning into a marketplace for bickering and now public, pornographic displays. It’s sad to watch and continues to erode our government’s prestige on the world stage.