Indiana Lawmaker Resigns After Texting Sex Video to Phone Contacts

Republican state House representative tried to blame Canada. No, seriously.

Jud McMillin, the second-highest ranking Republican in the Indiana House, has resigned his position after he reportedly goofed and sent a sex video to an unknown number of cell phone contacts. An accidental foray into amateur porn distribution would’ve been bad enough for a politician aligned with conservative causes, but McMillin doubled down with the Canadian Defense, which was perhaps doomed at the outset. 

According to the Indianapolis Star, after the after the video went out, McMillin sent a text message that read, “My phone was stolen in Canada and out of my control for about 24 hours. I have just been able to reactivate it under my control. Please disregard any messages you received recently. I am truly sorry for anything offensive you may have received.”

After he presumably received a few replies saying something like, ‘Dude, Jud, COME ON,’ McMillin apparently decided to throw in the towel. As the Indianapolis Business Journal reported, McMillin resigned from his post, noting that “after five years of dedicated service,” he had “decided the time is right for me to pass the torch and spend more time with my family.”

Indianapolis media noted that this wasn’t McMillin’s first improper incident. He was a prosecutor in Montgomery County, Ohio, until he resigned in 2005 after it was revealed he’d had a sexual relationship with the victim in a case he was prosecuting. A later Indianapolis Star investigation from 2013  revealed McMillin was one of several state officials who had “supported grants for companies to which they had close family or financial ties.” And a 2011 exposé of McMillin by a site aimed at the LGBTQ community—a community McMillin hasn’t been especially friendly with—rounded up plenty of  additional evidence of shady activity, including sending sexts and x-rated photos as far back as 2005—when most people still had flip-phones. So give it to the guy on that score: he was pretty committed to the art of the dickpic. 

Regarding McMillin’s resignation, Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma said in a statement that the Indiana House Republican Caucus was “thankful for Representative McMillin’s service to our state, and we fully support his decision to step down in order to focus on his family.” 

Photos by Michael Conroy/AP Photo