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A former Commerce Department official in the Trump administration has been sentenced to 5-and-a-half years in prison after pleading guilty to a federal charge of receiving child pornography.
Adam Hageman, 26, was arrested in November 2020 after Homeland Security executed a search warrant of his home in Washington, DC.
During the search, he voluntarily unlocked his cell phone and provided access to an image vault containing child pornography to Homeland Security officials, according to a pre-trial detention memo. The vault contained at least 33 videos that appeared to contain sexually explicit depictions of children, the memo said.
In the memo, prosecutors accused Hageman of encouraging people in an online group to rape children and soliciting group members to share child pornography.
According to an affidavit by a Homeland Security special agent, which was filed in November 2020, Hageman indicated that his preference was children aged 12 to 16 and said that the youngest person he had sex with was 15 years old.
Hageman pleaded guilty to a charge of receiving child pornography last Thursday.
US District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to 66 months in prison. After his release, he will be on parole for five years. Hageman will also have to register as a sex offender.
Before working for the Commerce Department, Politico reported that Hageman was an administrator for Turning Point USA — the far-right conservative nonprofit organization.
Hageman 's attorney, the US Department of Commerce, and Turning Point USA did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.
