By Lee Roper
Kurt Alme, the Trump-endorsed candidate for Senate in Montana, is accused of being too lenient toward pedophiles during his time as the state’s U.S. attorney, according to a report from Huffpost.
In 2019, a grand jury in Montana indicted tribal police officer Mychal Thomas Damon, 28, on one count of abusive sexual contact with an individual under 12. Damon admitted to touching the 6-year-old child’s genitals, and the victim reportedly told a therapist, “Mychal touched me” and hurt her by putting his fingers in her “hoo hoo.”
The crime carries a maximum punishment of life in prison, a $250,000 fine, and no less than five years to a lifetime of supervised release.
But Alme’s office filed a plea deal in Damon’s case to reduce the charge to felony child abuse and raise the victim’s age from under 12 to under 14. Damon was sentenced to the time he’d already served, 324 days, and two years of supervised release. The deal also moved the offense out of the federal sex crimes framework, so Damon would not be required to register as a sex offender.
Trump appointed Alme to serve as U.S. Attorney in Montana from September 2017 through December 2020, and then again from March 2025 through March 2026 when he returned to office. During his first term, Alme’s office decline 64% of sexual assault cases, Huffpost noted.
In a statement, Alme’s campaign spokesperson blamed “Kurt’s liberal opponents are twisting the facts to manufacture a fake narrative that exploits crimes against women and children.”
“Department of Justice policy required defendants to plead to the most serious charge readily provable from the evidence,” the campaign added. “Kurt strongly supported the Multi-Disciplinary Teams on our Native American reservations, led by his office, to support investigations of crimes against children and to support victims.”
Trump endorsed Alme, who won the Republican Senate primary earlier this month to replace retiring Republican Sen. Steve Daines. He will face Democrat Alani Bankhead and independent candidate Seth Bodnar in the November election.
In Texas, Trump-backed Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, is similarly accused of going too easy on a pedophile when his office reached a plea deal with Adam Hoffman, a former Waco attorney. In June 2025, Hoffman stood trial on a charge of first-degree felony continuous sexual abuse of a young child, facing a potential sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. During the proceedings, a friend of Hoffman’s son testified that the disgraced lawyer sexually abused him multiple times over the course of three years beginning in the third grade.
Paxton’s deal reduced Hoffman’s charges to indecent assault and display of harmful materials to a minor, accompanied by an admission of intent to abuse the victim without specifying an age. Because his admission did not include the victim’s age, Hoffman was not required to register as a sex offender. The deal also proposed that Hoffman serve just one day in jail, but a judge lengthened it to 30 days. The sentence was later increased to 60 days, but Hoffman was ultimately released after just 30 days behind bars.
