Eliot Cutler, 75, faces four counts of possession of sexually explicit material by a minor under the age of 12, after investigators found 10 files of children being exploited on his computer, according to The Portland Press Herald. Culter may face additional charges as police continue to look at terabytes of data on devices confiscated from two of the former Independent candidate’s homes, the article said. Officials arrested Cutler at his Brooklyn farm even as the investigation continued, prosecutors said. He was held on $ 50,000 bail. “Given the incredibly high $ 50,000 cash guarantee set Friday night after the banks closed, it is unclear whether the guarantee will be paid,” Cutler’s lawyer, Walt McKee, told the newspaper. The researchers found 10 files of children under the age of 12 that were exploited on Culter’s computer. Portland Press Herald via Getty The investigation came from information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that someone in Maine had downloaded or uploaded an illegal image, the report said. “It was a well-known piece of child pornography,” Hancock County Prosecutor Matt Foster told the newspaper. Cutler, a former member of President Jimmy Carter’s administration, ran for governor in 2010 and 2014 after working as a lawyer in Washington. He resigned as chairman of the Lerner Foundation board, which encourages rural students to go to college on Wednesday after a raid on one of his homes. Maine’s lawyer is being held in Hancock County Jail in Maine on $ 50,000 bail. “We are deeply saddened to learn of the serious allegations made against Eliot Cutler today,” the foundation’s executive director, Don Carpenter, wrote in an email on Friday, the Herald reported. “In his previous role on the board, Eliot was involved in high-level strategy and governance and had no direct contact with students involved in grant programming.”
