BREAKING: Capitol Police Investigating Second Sex Video

Capitol Hill police are reportedly investigating the existence of another explicit video taken by a former congressional staffer less than a week after Washington was rocked by the release of a video featuring a gay ex-staffer fornicating in one of the Senate’s most esteemed hearing rooms.

Semafor scooped that the House quietly launched an investigation regarding “purported, unbecoming behavior” by a former staffer for Congressman Dan Newhouse (R-WA). The effort, undertaken last year, ended with “no conclusive evidence.”

In an interview, the staffer denied participating in the video which made the rounds on Snapchat among congressional staffers and associates. In the video, a man is seen masturbating inside a House office building identifiable by standard Capitol Hill furniture and carpeting. Semafor obtained a screenshot from the video which showed two men engaged in a sex act in an office setting. The video was attributed to a user by the name “Adam J” with the handle “Anjackson2019.”

Rep. Newhouse said the video was brought to his attention in June of 2022 when he was told that one of the participants was a suspected member of his staff.

“As soon as the office was alerted, we immediately contacted the appropriate House entities to conduct an independent investigation,” the spokesperson for Newhouse said, adding that “the office will not be providing further comment on personnel matters.”

While Semafor declined to name one of the individuals seen in the video, veteran Washington journalist Matthew Keys revealed on X that the former staffer is Sean O’Brien, Newhouse’s former deputy chief of staff. O’Brien, who has since scrubbed or deleted his social media profiles, told Semafor that he left the congressman’s office in the fall of 2022 on good terms to take a job outside of Washington, D.C. Rep. Newhouse praised O’Brien in a public statement at the time of his hire.

Semafor didn't identify the senior @RepNewhouse staffer who was suspected of making a sex tape at the Capitol last year.

He is Sean O'Brien, Rep. Newhouse's former deputy chief of staff, who has since scrubbed his social media accounts from the Internet. https://t.co/xThtoE4qP1

— Matthew Keys (@MatthewKeysLive) December 21, 2023

National media was briefly blanketed by stories over the past week of a former aide to U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) engaging in a sexual act in the Senate chambers. Cardin, who once referred to the room as “sacred,” was caught flustered on the street just one day later distancing himself from his former aide.

“I don’t know the details,” Sen. Cardin said in a video clip circulating online. “My knowledge of this was over the weekend when I learned about it, made sure that he was separated, so he left the Senate employment, and that the appropriate steps were taken from the point of view of our office,” Cardin went on to say.