Police raid home of Fox News employee, charge him with possession of child porn
By: Scott McCabe
Examiner Staff Writer
February 11, 2009
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| Bruns |
A Fox News Channel producer was charged with possession of child pornography after authorities searched his Dupont Circle-area apartment, according to documents filed in federal court Tuesday.
Aaron Bruns, 29, a Fox News “embed” during the 2008 presidential election, was ordered to remain in jail Tuesday until his preliminary hearing Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Alan Kay. This is at least the second time that Bruns has had a brush with the law over child pornography allegations.
On Jan. 23, members of the FBI and D.C. police child exploitation task force raided Bruns’ apartment after undercover investigators in Pennsylvania found evidence that Bruns was offering to share child pornography over the Internet. Bruns was present when police executed the search warrant.
Police said they found a laptop computer with numerous still images and at least five movie files depicting children under the age of 10 being sexually abused by adult men and women, according to police documents. Images showed the children, some as young as 3 years old, being tied up and raped, court filings said.
Bruns, who worked out of the Fox News’ Washington, D.C., bureau, was one of the reporters who followed candidates with a video camera on the campaign trail. Bruns covered then-Sen. Hillary Clinton’s run for the Democratic nomination. More recently, he covered Vice President Joseph Biden Jr.’s farewell speeches to the Senate.
A Fox News spokeswoman did not immediately return phone calls for comment.
This was not Bruns’ first arrest on child pornography charges. In 1999, Bruns dropped out of University of Michigan after the Florida Bureau of Investigations informed the university that an individual was using the school computer system to trade images of children involved in sexual situations.
Detectives seized Bruns’ computer from his dorm room and found thousands of pornographic images stored on it, many of them of children in explicit sexual situations, according to the school paper. Burns was arrested on charges of distributing child pornography.
The courts records in the 1999 case were not available and it was unclear how that case was adjudicated.
