This past weekend, hordes of Congressional staffers’ phones blew up with texts from friends, family, enemies, and coworkers—all asking if they’d seen the sex tape.
“Sex tape” turns out to be a somewhat generous term for an eight-second iPhone clip that includes three graphically depicted thrusts of a large pale appendage into the eagerly bouncing buttocks of a young gentleman who, until this tape leaked to the press, worked as a legislative aide to Maryland Senator Ben Cardin. Needless to say, the young gentleman of bouncing buttocks is now unemployed—a result of the finale of his video, in which the camera pans across what appears to be an elaborate conference room, ending with a shot of the seal of the United States Senate. Yes, he made a sex tape at work. Then he apparently posted it in a quasi-public forum, from which it predictably leaked.
Hill staffers, apparently, are not pleased—and a couple of them spoke with Washingtonian on the condition of anonymity. (Unlike our cavorting friend, they seem to want to keep their jobs.) Among staffers, they said, there’s concern for the reputation of the Senate, the cleanliness of their workplace, and the “hardworking good custodians who don’t deserve this.” They also expressed sympathy for Ben Cardin’s staff (“I’m really glad that I’m not the person who had to explain to the Senator what happened, because someone did”) and pity for Amy Klobuchar who, during meetings of the Senate Judiciary Committee, apparently sits at the very spot in which the sex act was performed.
Group texts right now are pandemonium. “It’s a lot of ‘What the fuck was this person thinking?’ and ‘This is fucking ridiculous,’ ” one Senate staffer said. “I mean, this is our workplace—it’s special and important in many ways, but it’s just a regular workplace for us.” Another Senate-side employee said his colleagues are “really taken aback by the brazenness.” He added, “As a gay staffer, I will cop to being horny on the Hill from time to time, but it would never occur to me to do that.”
His surprise has largely to do with the location of the tryst: the Senate’s grandest, fanciest hearing room, located inside the Hart Building. It’s where Supreme Court Justices have been confirmed, where James Comey gave testimony about Donald Trump in 2017, and where the 9/11 Commission hearings occurred. “Really important things happen there,” one staffer explained. “It’s the biggest, nicest hearing room that is used for special occasions and high-profile events.”
But the room is extremely not-private. “There are multiple entrances—I couldn’t tell you how many—at least two, but possibly more,” she said. “In theory, people walk through it all the time” to get from the Hart building to the Dirksen building. “You can think of it like a conference room. It can be reserved for specific things, but just because it’s not reserved doesn’t mean that someone’s not going to walk into it. The idea that someone would do that there is just wild.”
Of course, sex at the Capitol isn’t unprecedented. “I know of people who have had sex in bathrooms,” one staffer said, “but those have some relative privacy—like, you’re in a stall and it’s just you and your selected guest.” Another popular spot, apparently, is the House-side storage facilities known as “the Cages.” Six or seven years ago, that staffer says he was part of a Snapchat group where other Hill folks would, as he put it, “upload their content from that particular location.” “But this is the first time I’ve heard of a hearing room,” he added, describing the choice to bang in such a public place as “stupid, reckless, and irresponsible.”
In general, the mood on the Hill is apparently more disgust than amusement. “Some other gay staffers kind of took on this sanctimonious tone of like, ‘Oh, my God, this is the Senate, this is desecrating the institution,’ ” said the gay staffer who spoke to Washingtonian. He understands that reaction; “It’s not a great time for LGBTQ rights in this country and I feel like a lot of folks wanted to create some distance between themselves and that kind of behavior.”
But he’s also annoyed. “I was like, can y’all just be real? This is the least productive Congress in, what, 50 years? Christine Blasey Ford bore her soul and they still put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court [in that room]. That, to me, is a desecration of the room. This twink getting railed is not great—I don’t think it should happen again. But worse things have happened in that room.”
Various aspects of the scandal, that staffer concedes, have been fun. (On the size of the offending appendage, he remarked, “Oh, my god. It was massive. I was sort of taken aback. I was like, this is probably the largest thing I’ve ever seen. He was putting in the work.”) But he’s also ready to get back to the business of serving the people. “It’s a stupid thing,” he said of the sex tape. “And now we can get some Lysol, wipe the place down, and move on.”
For the ex-staffer who made the video, though, the future seems bleak; in addition to being fired, he’s now facing a Capitol Police investigation that could result in criminal charges. Asked about his career prospects, one staffer said, “He’s probably done working in politics, so you have to do a hard pivot. Is Grindr hiring for government affairs?”
“I certainly think he’s going to have a hard time finding a job in another Senate office,” a different staffer said. Then she added, wryly, “Maybe someone in the House will take him.”
