A Democrat congressional aide has been fired from his job after a gay sex tape recorded in the US Senate swept the internet. Aidan Maese-Czeropski, 24, was fired by Maryland Senator Ben Cardin on Saturday afternoon. It came less than a day after a video showed two men having sex in a Senate room. The identities have not been revealed.
"Aidan Maese-Czeropski is no longer employed by the U.S. Senate. We will have no further comment on this personnel matter," a Cardin spokeswoman said. Maese-Czeropski, who appeared in a 2020 campaign video with Joe Biden, released a statement on LinkedIn Friday night claiming that he would never disrespect his workplace.
Caught and Fired
Maese-Czeropski was accused of posting a video featuring himself engaged in explicit activities with another man on a publicly accessible X account. The Spectator was the first to report the story on Friday, noting that his face was clearly visible in the video.
The roughly eight seconds of sexual intercourse reportedly took place in a room that serves as the venue for Supreme Court nominee hearings and where former FBI director James Comey testified about alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The explicit video of this incident was released by The Daily Caller on Friday evening.
The United States Capitol Police launched an investigation into potential criminal violations following the circulation of the video.
Maese-Czeropski had previously appeared in a campaign video for President Biden, and his mother had given him a shoutout on her now-deleted X account.
"Thank you for including my son, Aidan Maese-Czeropski, in your thoughtful message to everyone who has supported you," the staffer's mother said in a November 2020 post. "He has worked tirelessly with the DNC of Virginia. Congratulations to All!!"
In the same year, Maese-Czeropski reportedly posted on the payment platform Venmo, writing, "I want Joe Biden to spit in my mouth."
In Self Defense
In a statement on LinkedIn, the former staffer admitted to having "shown poor judgment" but he would never disrespect his workplace. "This has been a difficult time for me, as I have been attacked for who I love to pursue a political agenda.
"While some of my actions in the past have shown poor judgement, I love my job and would never disrespect my workplace.
"Any attempts to characterize my actions otherwise are fabricated and I will be exploring what legal options are available to me in these matters."
Maese-Czeropski has not yet publicly made any comment after being fired from his job.
Footage of the sexual encounter, first exposed by the Daily Caller, shows a young-looking male staffer positioned over a conference room table in the Hart Senate Office Building. Another man is standing behind him, filming explicit content of the sexual act they are engaged in.
In a separate photo, the staffer is shown naked and on all fours on a table typically used by Senators during hearings. Allegedly shared within a private group for gay men in the political sphere, the footage was said to have appeared on a now-deleted account on X.
The account owner self-identifies as a 'twink'—a young, smooth-bodied gay man—involved in sexual activities with his older 'bear' partner.
Shortly before his termination was confirmed, Magdalena Rivera Maese, Maese-Czeropski's mother, suggested that her son had been deeply affected by the incident, saying, "You don't want to know how he's doing."
Maese-Czeropski's narrative elicited widespread ridicule from the Washington, D.C. chattering class, with disgraced Rep. George Santos taking a prominent role in leading the mockery.
"Having sex in a United States government building and filming it is the reason you got heat. You being gay and having gay sex NO BODY gives a rats ass," Santos wrote on X.
As per his LinkedIn profile, Maese-Czeropski has been employed in Cardin's office since October 2021. Earlier, he served as a field organizer for the Democratic Party in Virginia and worked as a climate researcher for the charity Friends of the Earth.
Senator Cardin announced his retirement at the end of his current term in May. As of the information provided, Cardin's office has not issued any comments on the allegations concerning his staffer. Maese-Czeropski did not respond immediately to attempts to contact him.
