The Saga of SC State Senator and Kik Kreeper RJ May Continues

RJ May, the Republican South Carolina State Senator who co-founded the South Carolina Freedom Caucus, was indicted in June on ten federal counts tied to distributing CSAM. Prosecutors say he used a Kik account with the meme-bait handle “joebidennnn69” during a five-day burst in late March and early April 2024. He was arrested at home, denied bond, expelled by his own caucus, and then persuaded a judge to let him serve as his own lawyer. Fool for a client and all that.

For readers who don’t live inside the muck of moderation failures, Kik is a free chat app with minimal verification and an abysmal track record. It has long been a magnet for people who use throwaway usernames to trade CSAM under a veil of anonymity. The company does send cyber tips to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, but the culture on the platform makes it a favored hub for sex offenders, pedophiles, CSAM collectors, and child traffickers long before any tip is ever sent. In plain terms, it is a digital back alley where pseudonyms do the talking and accountability shows up late, if ever.

This week brought the most detailed portrait yet of how federal prosecutors say May used that alley. Court filings lay out chat excerpts where “joebidennnn69” volunteered preferences like “small,” “bad moms,” “bad dads,” and “bad preteens” and asked for “vids with sound in English.” Investigators say those chats line up with the technical trail. The account was accessed nearly a thousand times from May’s home Wi-Fi and his phone, and his devices lit up with more than 450 Kik notifications over those same five days. The app was then deleted on April 4, followed in short order by other encrypted apps that had been installed and tested. If this were the work of a political rival, that rival would have needed physical possession of May’s phone for days to keep pace with the messages, the notifications, the app installs, the deletions, and the cross-device activity that prosecutors mapped to his hardware.

May keeps insisting there was no CSAM stored on his devices and that “digital forensics just don’t work like that.” The filings tell a different story. He is charged with distributing ten pieces of CSAM, yet prosecutors say the Kik account held 220 distinct items of CSAM. During that five-day spree, “joebidennnn69” sent media 21 times in group chats and 458 times in one-to-one exchanges. Recipients were not limited to South Carolina. Messages and files went to 46 users across 18 states and five countries, including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Romania, Australia, and Canada. One of those recipients was an Oklahoma City nurse who is now facing his own CSAM charges in federal court.

The network path matters. According to the filing, 432 shares happened on May’s home Wi-Fi. Another 19 traveled over cellular service tied to his phone. Only 28 were routed through a VPN. That split undercuts the idea of a sophisticated ghost using layers of obfuscation. Most of the trading was local to his own access points. The VPN shows up like a weak disguise tossed on here and there when the heat rose.

The timeline also shows a man juggling trades while tending to his political brand. On April 3, an email went out from May’s laptop to a consultant and a legislator. Twenty seconds later, “joebidennnn69” messaged about a “trade.” Within seconds, May followed his email with a text while videos rolled into the Kik account. Almost immediately, the Kik user replied with two files, one of which is part of the charged set. Minutes later, the laptop was back to political searches about familiar Beltway figures. Elsewhere in the logs, a Kik user asked for “hebe,” and two minutes later May’s laptop searched “hebe meaning,” then “hebephile” and “hebephilia.” You can call it coincidence. You can also call it a fingerprint.

For those who may not know, hebephilia is the ‘attraction’ to children ages 11-14. Some will try to defend this as not being ‘as bad’ as pedophilia, but it is. So save it for someone who cares.

As for the courtroom, the maneuvering is already intense. May is trying to suppress the results of 35 seized devices, asking the judge to toss everything or at least limit evidence to what lived only on the phone’s bare storage and not inside any apps. He also wants to move the trial out of Columbia, pointing to what he calls prejudicial coverage and stapling a thick packet of articles and blogs to his motion. Prosecutors, meanwhile, want permission to reference items beyond the ten charged to give the jury a complete picture of intent and preparation. The judge will hear arguments on those motions before the trial date of October 9.

There is a bigger hypocrisy humming underneath all of this. May helped build a brand on “traditional values,” on the idea that cultural decay lives somewhere out there in blue cities and college towns. Then the filings describe “joebidennnn69” soliciting CSAM while emails fly for Ivory Tusk Consulting and search tabs swing back to the day job. The moral panic is always loudest from people who need it as cover. It works until it doesn’t.

Ten counts are on the books. Two hundred and twenty alleged items sit in the wings. Dozens of recipients stretch across the map. Most of the traffic rode his own Wi-Fi and phone, with a dash of VPN thrown in for show. And if you still want to believe a political enemy did it, remember what that would require. Not a guess at a Wi-Fi password. A hand on the phone for days.

The Freedom Caucus cut him loose. The court let him go pro se. The rest will be evidence, not slogans. And for anyone tempted to look away, do not sanitize what the CSAM stands for here. Look at the numbers. Look at the timeline. Then decide what you think “family values” really meant in this house.

(Source)