Long-serving GOP legislator indicted on child sex charges in North Dakota

The longest-serving state senator in North Dakota history has been indicted on federal charges related to child pornography.

Ray Holmberg, a Republican who resigned last spring, was charged in an indictment unsealed Monday with travel with the intent to engage in illicit sexual activity and receipt of child pornography after investigators showed he traded scores of text messages with a convicted sex offender, reported KFGO-TV.

The indictment claims Holmberg traveled to the Czech Republic to engage with sex with a minor and knowingly received child sex abuse materials between June 2011 and November 2016.

Holmberg, who allegedly used the aliases “Sean Evan” and “Sean Evans," is accused of communicating with Nicholas Morgan Derosier while the other man was jailed on child pornography charges.

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Police and federal agents raided the 79-year-old legislator's home two years ago in Grand Rapids.

Holmberg, who was first elected in 1976, was one of the state's most powerful legislators and chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee and Legislative Management Committee.