A former high-level aide to California Sen. Barbara Boxer was charged with possession of child pornography in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia late last week after investigators found hundreds of images on his home computer.
Jeff P. Rosato, 32, of Arlington, worked for the three-term Democrat from February 2005 through August 2007, rising through the ranks from legislative assistant to senior policy adviser, Senate records show.
In October 2007, Rosato moved to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, for which Boxer is the chairwoman. He was fired from his committee post as senior policy adviser and counsel Friday, Boxer’s spokeswoman said.
“On Friday, the Justice Department informed our office of criminal charges made against a Senate employee,” Boxer’s spokeswoman, Natalie Ravitz, told The Examiner in an e-mail.
“Senator Boxer has zero tolerance for crimes against children, and the employee was immediately terminated,” Ravitz wrote. “Our office is cooperating fully with the Department of Justice in this matter.”
On Friday, Rosato was charged with possession of child pornography after FBI agents found 200 pictures and several movies of prepubescent boys having sex, a sworn statement by FBI agent Chad Gallagher said. One of the images shows two boys, about 10 years old, engaged in sexual activity, the statement said.
Investigators were led to Rosato after linking his Internet Protocol address to a Google Hello user name that had received hundreds of child pornographic images from a known porn distributor in February 2007, the statement said.
Google Hello, an Internet picture sharing service, was shut down in June so the Internet giant could further develop its more popular Picasa.
The unnamed distributor’s computer was seized in January, and Rosato’s user name was among several who had been receiving the pornographic files, the statement said.
In May, investigators subpoenaed Google for the user identification number for Rosato’s user name. Google provided access logs that linked the user identification number to an IP address, the statement said.
A second subpoena, issued in July, was sent to Comcast to find the owner of the IP address. Comcast identified Rosato as the account holder with the IP address, the statement said.
Property records show Rosato bought a condominium in Arlington in January. It was there that officials say they found the images stored on a Dell laptop computer that was in his bedroom.
