SC House member under investigation for child sex crimes, colleague alleges
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State Rep. Robert “RJ” May
South Carolina State Rep. Robert “RJ” May of Lexington County has been indicted on 10 federal counts of distributing child sexual abuse material.
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State Rep. Brandon Guffey, R-York, openly spoke on the House floor Wednesday about a fellow state representative being under investigation for child sex crimes.
“We have a member within this body that has been investigated for child sex crimes,” Guffey said during this year’s final budget debate.
In an interview with The State later Wednesday, Guffey said he was referring to state Rep. R.J. May, R-Lexington, whose house was raided by federal officials in August.
Guffey cited reporting from another media outlet when asked about how he knew details of any investigation. The State newspaper has not independently verified the reason for the investigation or the raid on May’s house.
No charges have been filed or made public against May.
The search was carried out by agents from the Homeland Security Investigations unit, a law enforcement agency within the Department of Homeland Security that investigates drug and weapons smuggling, cyber and financial crimes and child exploitation and human trafficking.
Federal officials searched a home belonging to May on Aug. 5 and seized various electronic equipment including a Lenovo laptop, an Amazon tablet, four cellphones, four hard drives, four SD cards, two DVD-Rs and 19 thumb drives, according to a court filing.
As Guffey spoke Wednesday in the chamber, he touched on the increase in this year’s budget for lawmakers’ in-district expense stipends from $1,000 a month to $2,500 a month, which amounts to an $18,000 increase in compensation.
The pay increase has been criticized as being slipped into the budget without public input.
Guffey said he planned to donate the increase to organizations such as National Center of Sexual Online Exploitation and Operation Lightshine, a group that combats child exploitation and human trafficking.
“The worst thing about it, out of all of these arguments, we have a member within this body that has been investigated for child sex crimes, and everyone can sit with him like there’s no issue and never have any trouble, but yet, whenever it comes to doing something like this, everything needs to turn into politics, and I’m sick and tired of it,” Guffey said on the House floor.
Guffey, whose son died by suicide in 2022 after a sextortion plot, has been a critic of the hard-line conservative House Freedom Caucus, which was founded by May.
May, who regularly attended legislative sessions this year, was suspended from the group, but regularly votes with them.
May did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Wednesday afternoon.
Guffey, in an interview, also objected to a House member’s previous comments of May being an upstanding citizen.
“I don’t know how it is in their areas, but in my area an upstanding citizen is not under investigation for child sex abuse material,” Guffey said.
This story was originally published May 28, 2025 at 4:50 PM.
