A shocking story has been spreading online about Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett, the non-voting delegate from the U.S. Virgin Islands. Headlines claimed that she worked with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender, to dig up dirt on President Donald Trump. The story gets even messier when you find out that Plaskett had private nude photos stolen and shared by her own staffers. But what’s really true here? Let’s break it down.
The part about Plaskett texting with Epstein is true. She admitted it herself. During a 2019 House Oversight Committee hearing where President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was testifying, Plaskett received messages from Epstein. She said Epstein was helping her come up with questions to ask Cohen. She claimed Epstein had “information” that she believed would help her get to the truth. That connection came under heavy fire, especially because Epstein was already infamous for his crimes involving underage girls.
Plaskett’s excuse—that she was just trying to get at the truth—didn’t go over well with many in Congress. In fact, when the news of her Epstein connection broke, lawmakers brought a vote to censure her, which is an official punishment by the House. She barely avoided that punishment. The vote failed by just five votes: 209 to 214.
But the Epstein connection is only part of the story.
Back in 2016, Plaskett asked a staffer named Juan McCullum to help fix her iPhone. While doing that, McCullum found private nude images and videos on her phone. One of those videos showed her husband naked and wearing makeup, with their young child in the room. That video would later be used in a disgusting attempt to ruin her.
After leaving Plaskett’s office, McCullum went to work for another Democrat, Rep. Frederica Wilson of Florida. But he wasn’t done with Plaskett. Using a fake email and Facebook account, McCullum sent the nude pictures to other politicians, reporters, and even posted them online. He also worked with another former Plaskett staffer, Dorene Browne-Louis, who had moved on to a job at the Department of Homeland Security.
Court documents show that Browne-Louis helped McCullum by giving him email addresses of Plaskett’s political allies and even asked him to send her the nude images again. She gave at least one of the pictures to a campaign worker for Plaskett’s opponent in the 2016 Democratic primary. That worker then gave it to a journalist.
Prosecutors said Browne-Louis lied to investigators and to a federal grand jury about what she knew. She claimed McCullum wasn’t trying to hurt Plaskett, even though messages between them made it clear that revenge was the goal. McCullum himself wrote, “Somebody will pay for how we were treated.”
Both McCullum and Browne-Louis eventually pleaded guilty to their crimes. McCullum got a prison sentence of one year and one day, plus community service and probation. Browne-Louis did not go to jail, partly because her husband was murdered soon after the photos came out. In August 2016, her husband, a firefighter, was shot and killed outside his station in the Virgin Islands.
In court, Plaskett gave a powerful statement. She said that her family’s privacy was “pillaged” and compared what McCullum and Browne-Louis did to being “stripped in public.” She was especially hurt by the fact that the video of her husband was used to humiliate him and even suggest something inappropriate about their family.
Her husband, Jonathan Buckney-Small, also wrote a victim impact statement. He described the rage he felt when he saw McCullum again after learning about the betrayal. He said he had to decide whether to take justice into his own hands or let the law handle it.
So what’s the truth here?
Yes, Stacey Plaskett did text with Jeffrey Epstein during a congressional hearing, and she tried to explain it as an effort to get information. But the larger story is that she was the victim of a serious crime. Two of her former staffers stole private images and used them to try to destroy her reputation. The story is disturbing, complicated, and full of bad actors—but it’s important to get the facts straight before jumping to conclusions.