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Trump's good friend judge James Gosnell is as bad as any Nazi. He's into torturing, raping and murdering infants and toddlers including necrophillia!

Former Charleston magistrate judge James Gosnell Jr. pleads guilty to child porn charges

Story by Emily Deanne

July 3, 2026

James Gosnell Jr., a former Charleston magistrate judge, pleaded guilty Thursday in federal court to two child pornography charges, avoiding a trial that had been scheduled to begin with jury selection in August 2026.

The 69-year-old pleaded guilty to one count of possession of child pornography involving a prepubescent minor and one count of distribution of child pornography.

According to federal prosecutors, the possession charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The distribution charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years and a maximum of 20 years. Combined, Gosnell faces up to 40 years in federal prison, along with hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential fines, special assessments and restitution for victims.

Former Charleston magistrate judge James Gosnell Jr. pleads guilty to child porn charges

As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to seek dismissal of the remaining charges at sentencing if Gosnell complies with the terms of the agreement. During Thursday's hearing, Gosnell admitted to possessing and distributing child sexual abuse material.

U.S. Attorney Bryan Stirling said the guilty plea brings certainty to the case while prosecutors continue to seek the maximum sentence.

“These deviant, disgusting, and deeply disturbing actions truly shock our community,” Stirling said.

Stirling said investigators uncovered thousands of files depicting the sexual abuse of children after executing a search warrant at Gosnell's home.

“The depths of the darkness revealed in Gosnell's electronics and messages to his co-conspirator serve as a reminder that evil walks among us, often hiding in plain sight, him being a judge sitting on the bench,” Stirling said.

According to prosecutors, the investigation began after a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and information linked to online payments. Investigators traced the activity to Gosnell's phone number, email address and residence before executing a search warrant in September 2025.

Authorities said they seized more than 3,700 images and videos of child sexual abuse material stored on flash drives, discs and VHS tapes. Prosecutors said the material included content involving children under the age of 12, including infants and toddlers, that included the bonding, rape, torture and murder of children, as well as a video called “Daisy's Demise,” and videos of dead children being sexually assaulted.

Good friend of President Trump, Charleston magistrate judge James Gosnell Jr., pleads guilty to shocking child porn charges involving torture, murder and necrophillia

Stirling said prosecutors will ask the court to impose the maximum possible sentence.

“Gosnell's plea today is a resolution for the public, the government, and his victims. He faces a maximum term of imprisonment, which we will be arguing for, for 40 years,” Stirling said.

He added that accepting the plea avoids the uncertainty of a trial.

“What it gives us is certainty,” he said. “If you go to trial, there's uncertainty after relying on jurors. ... There's finality to this,” Stirling said. “All the conduct that's alleged and all the conduct that we saw will be included in his sentencing reports.”

Stirling also said he hopes the plea provides closure to those impacted by the case.

“We hope this plea will bring finality and closure to the community that he betrayed,” Stirling said.

Gosnell's attorney, Lionel Lofton, said his client chose to plead guilty to spare his family from a lengthy trial.

“Gosnell took the position that, 'I'm not going to put my family through any more heartache or hardship. I'm just going to go ahead and plead,'” Lofton said.

Lofton said the defense had challenged the legality of the search warrant but lost that argument in court.

“I just didn't think the search had probable cause. We challenged that. The court ruled against us,” Lofton said. He added that he hopes the court ultimately imposes a sentence that allows Gosnell to be released someday.

“Hopefully we can convince the court that he's not an evil person and he did stupid things and he violated the law,” Lofton said.

Stirling said the case represents a breach of public trust by someone who once served on the bench.

“South Carolina is better than this. They deserve better than this from their public servants,” Stirling said.

Booking photos of John Badger Thorpe and James Benjamin Gosnell Jr

The guilty plea comes just over a month after co-defendant John Thorpe pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy and child pornography distribution charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Noah Berlatsky at Everything Is Horrible:

What should we do about the out-of-control Christofascist Supreme Court? “I think everything needs to be on the table,” very centrist Pennsylvania Governor and woul-be 2028 presidential nominee Josh Shapiro said when asked that question last week following the narrow 5-4 decision defending birthright citizenship. That echoed the language from very centrist House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffires, who responded to the court’s pro-racist gerrymandering decision by stating, “We’re going to have to do something about this Supreme Court. And let me be very clear: everything is on the table.” Very centrist former Transportation Secretary and would-be 2028 presidential nominee Pete Buttigieg was even more explicit. The court, he said, had gone “rogue” and needed to be reformed. There “doesn’t have to be nine,” he said.

It’s a very hopeful sign that centrist party leaders, not just progressives, are starting to speak openly about the need to expand the court. We need more of them to sign on—and we need them to do so in more explicit and clearer terms. As Jeffries and Shapiro demonstrate, even Democrats who are thinking about court expansion tend to cloak the policy in euphemism or ambiguity. If we actually want court-expansion to happen, though, we need politicians who are willing to say precisely what they want, and to promise to do just that. More, we need to get used to thinking of partisanship, not as an embarrassment or a barrier to change, but as a core antifascist tool.

[...]

The main answer is that politicians watch polls, and while some sort of court reform is wildly popular, expanding the court is not. Here are some court reforms and their popularity with the electorate according to a Brennan Center poll from March.

Mandatory retirement age for justices—73% Term limits for justices—73% National elections for justices—55% Retention elections for justices—53% Overturn rulings via referendum—53% Add seats—46%

There is a big difference between 73% support and 46% support. The first is a massive bipartisan majority. The second is a narrow partisan minority. In fact, 84% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans support term limits. In contrast 66% of Democrats support adding seats, compared to only 23% of Republicans.

[...] Jeffries and Shapiro are giving themselves room to weasel. Buttigieg is giving himself less room. Ideally, we should demand from 2028 Democratic candidates that they get even less weaselly than that. We should demand that Democratic candidates outbid each other on Supreme Court reform. Promise to end the filibuster and add 4 justices. Promise to end the filibuster and add 17 justices. Promise to end the filibuster and add 50 justices. The more the better. We want the current right-wing robed Christofascists to squawk and whine and be so frustrated and angry they just resign in disgrace.

Joe Walsh at The Social Contract (07.06.2026):

I went on MS Now this morning. The topic was…Communists!!! Or rather, would Trump’s constant daily drumbeating calling every Democrat a “communist” work? And it’s not just Trump, this now is THE daily talking point coming from every member of my former political party with the rise of these Democratic Socialists winning Democratic primaries. The MS NOW host, Antonia Hylton, asked me pointblank - “Will this ‘Democrats are all communists’ framing work?” And I answered succinctly- it shouldn’t work, but it WILL work if Democrats don’t FIGHT back against it. This Republican “communist” bullshit will work with voters outside the MAGA base if Democrats don’t loudly & proudly, and aggressively punch back against the charge. If Democrats do what Democrats typically do, turn the other cheek, rise above it all, dismissively refuse to get their hands dirty, hell yes the communist lie will work politically.

Just look at what recent history shows us. A couple crazies on the left a few years back screamed “defund the police,” and within a matter of just a few weeks, the entire Democratic Party got tagged as the “defund the police” party. Why? Because the right (of which I was part of) lied and said the whole Democratic Party wanted to defund the police, and Democrats, thinking they’re too intelligent to get involved in the messy hand to hand combat on an obviously nonsense labeling, arrogantly and dismissively refused to engage against the lie, refused to fight back against it, and for a lot of middle America voters, the defund the police lie stuck.

Or look at the 2024 presidential campaign. Trump spent hundreds of millions of dollars accusing Harris & the Dems of all sorts of terrible things when it came to their support for transgender Americans. “She’s for they and them, I’m for you,” was one of those ads. And what did the Harris campaign do? Nothing. Ignored the onslaught of transgender campaign ads, refused to engage or fight back, and for most of middle America, come Election Day, they were convinced that Harris wanted 3yr old kids to be surgically operated on to change their biology, and she wanted 16yr old high school girls to be forced to get naked with 16yr old biological boys. All lies. All fear mongering, but it worked because Dems thought they were too intelligent, were too good and too enlightened to even have to bother with such nonsense and fight back. And that fear and arrogance probably cost them Pennsylvania and Wisconsin…all because of the transgender issue.

So yes, if Democrats don’t punch back against this communist bullshit, it’ll stick with a lot of voters. Democrats need to punch back and say “fuck no we’re not communists, name one communist nominee, I dare ya, and btw, Trump is an actual fascist who’s got armed masked federal thugs lawlessly roaming our streets denying constitutional rights to immigrants and citizens alike.”

Joe Walsh is 100% correct: “Trump is a fascist. I don’t know one elected Democrat who is a communist. Shout that Democrats. Over and over.”

Walsh encourages Democrats to fight back against the false claims that the Democrats are “communists.”

From the 07.06.2026 edition of MS NOW's MS NOW Reports:

Alix Breeden at Daily Kos:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement came to his doorstep and waited outside of his hotel after he criticized them—now David Streever is suing.  Streever, with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, is coming for ICE officials for impeding on his First Amendment rights in a lawsuit filed July 6. Simply put, JT Morris, the deputy director of litigation at FIRE, told Daily Kos that this case is about “ICE trying to intimidate an American into silence.”

In January, Streever—like many Americans—was upset over the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Taking to his email, he located then-acting ICE Director Todd Lyons’ email address and gave him a piece of his mind for defending the federal officials involved in the shootings rather than standing in support of Good or Pretti.  “The way you are protecting the obvious execution in Minnesota, even as we see the videos, will lead to your downfall,” Streever wrote to Lyons in a January 2026 email. “Even Trump will turn on you before the end, and you will be a sad, despised man who eats himself alive with shame at your own pathetic weakness.”

Streever went on to tell Lyons that he will “never know peace” and that, while Lyons might try to “escape the burden of knowing the truth” about himself, he will not be able to outrun it. “You will torment yourself until your last day on Earth.” Apparently, this email was strongly worded enough to prompt ICE to show up at Streever’s home in Rochester, New York. In June, Nest home footage provided by FIRE shows two agents knocking at his door.  Not shown but documented in the press release, the agents talked to Streever’s wife. While she informed them that he and their daughter were out of the country on vacation and would be back in the coming days, they handed her a letter with a “WARNING NOTICE” stating that he “May be in violation of federal law.”

But the agents didn’t stop there. ICE officials located Streever and his young daughter’s travel itinerary and ascended upon their hotel in New York city late in the evening, according to the lawsuit, to wake up Streever in person. 

[...] In a lawsuit similar to Streever’s, Paigelynn Gonyea was also served a letter from ICE after she posted a video to social media naming Jonathan Ross as Good’s shooter. Soon after, ICE agents showed up at a polling station in Syracuse, New York, where Gonyea was working to give her the warning.