Sen. Ben Cardin‘s junior aide has left the Senate, the Maryland Democrat’s office announced on Saturday. The move came after news reports that the staff member was connected to a sex tape recorded in a Capitol Hill hearing room.
A portion of the recording, which was made public by the Daily Caller on Friday, shows two men having sex in the expansive hearing room of the Hart Senate Office Building. This building has hosted meetings of the 9/11 Commission, nominations for the Supreme Court, and former FBI Director James Comey’s historic 2017 testimony against Donald Trump. There had been earlier reports from The American Spectator that a Cardin employee was involved.
Although the staffer was not named in either report, other conservative media sites recognized one individual in the footage as Cardin’s legislative assistant, Aidan Maese-Czeropski.
“Aidan Maese-Czeropski is no longer employed by the U.S. Senate,” Cardin’s office stated in a statement first given to POLITICO on Saturday morning, following its silence on what it called a “personnel matter” yesterday.
The statement went on, “We will have no further comment on this personnel matter.”
In a statement that she shared on LinkedIn on Friday night, Maese-Czeropski did not explicitly deny her involvement.
He wrote, “I have been attacked for who I love to further a political agenda, so this has been a difficult time for me.” “Even though I’ve made some poor decisions in the past, I genuinely love what I do and would never treat my coworkers disrespectfully. Any attempts to describe my actions in a different light are untrue, and I will be investigating my legal options in these situations.
In a separate statement, he refuted claims that he had yelled “Free Palestine” at Republican congressman Max Miller (Ohio) in a Capitol hallway on Wednesday.
On Saturday, attempts to get in touch with Maese-Czeropski did not immediately succeed. According to congressional records, he began working for Cardin in October 2021. Before that, in 2018, he interned for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).
When I emailed U.S. Capitol Police on Saturday to inquire about the status of the investigation, they did not reply. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s aides chose not to respond.