Ryan Loskarn, chief of staff to Sen. Lamar Alexander was arrested in Washington Wednesday, for allegedly owning and distributing child porn videos on an internet site.
Loskarn was promptly dismissed from his post by Senator Alexander. The videos had illicit content depicting sexual abuse of girls and boys below six years, reports ABC news.
The charges against Loskarn state that he brought several child porn videos from a Toronto-based video company between October 2010 and March 2011. The videos were mostly sent to Loskarn via emails. In October 2013, the U.S. Postal Inspector Service identified the IPL address of Loskarn and found it to be most commonly associated with downloading of child pornographic videos.
The U.S. Postal Service inspector found the residential address of the accused from a social media site, Gnutella, and arrested Loskarn from his house Wednesday morning. While the agents were battering on his door, Loskarn was seen leaning outside a window in his house frantically looking for an escape.
"After approximately three to five seconds, Loskarn made a motion as if he were placing something down outside the window and closed the window," the complaint reads, according to a recent post on politico.
Inspectors found a Toshiba hard drive on the ridge of the house-roof after Loskarn was arrested. Loskarn admitted to owning a Toshiba hard drive. The drive contains more than 100 child porn videos along with the Gnutella peer to peer sharing software, reports Huffington post.
Loskarn appeared in court on Thursday for arraignment. The 35-year-old Tulane University graduate, who is extremely popular among his colleagues, admitted to the seriousness of his offense before the judge.
Loskarn faces a mandatory five year imprisonment and it can go up to 20 years. The next hearing of the case has been scheduled for Monday.
