WASHINGTON—Sen. Jim Banks, a conservative Republican representing Indiana, submitted a letter to the U.S. Justice Department and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche urging a crackdown on "obscenity," while singling out adult content creator powerhouse OnlyFans. The New York Post first reported the letter on Tuesday.
Banks wrote, "Ending obscenity prosecution was a mistake. With explicit content only a click away, there has never been a more important time to enforce our laws." Throughout the letter, Banks urges Blanche and President Donald J. Trump's administration to reintroduce the Bush-era Obscenity Prosecution Task Force and to clamp down on "obscenity."
"The porn industry has been complicit in child abuse and violence toward women while raking in billions," Banks posted on X. "Obscenity laws are still good law. It’s time to restart obscenity prosecutions and protect children online."
Banks specifically highlights OnlyFans as a platform via which "online obscenity has proliferated." He also floats the disputed claims that pornography "damages the mental and relational well-being of those who consume it and exploits those who participate in creating it."
He further contends that “OnlyFans has been exposed for allowing minors to sell explicit videos and for featuring child sex abuse content. The site hosts other kinds of extreme and dangerous sexual content, including videos involving bestiality, incest, and acts that demean women. ... It is neither healthy nor safe for sexual content to be so pervasive.”
A spokesperson for OnlyFans declined to comment on the letter. But prior overtures to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate platforms like OnlyFans and its London-based parent company, Fenix International Limited, would indicate that this is simply an exercise in political theater, and such requests will fall on deaf ears.
President Bush's task force on obscenity prosecutions was created in 2005 during his eight-year tenure to go after "hardcore" pornographic material that religious conservative federal prosecutors considered obscene. However, the task force proved extremely ineffective.
Geoffrey R. Stone, a legal scholar and the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, pointed out in an article he wrote for the First Amendment Law Review in 2022 that between 2001 and 2005, federal obscenity prosecutions were fewer than 10.
Until the task force was shuttered in 2011, that number remained stagnant. A landmark example of the division's inability to secure convictions was the obscenity case brought against John Stagliano, an AVN Hall of Famer and the owner of Evil Angel. Stagliano was indicted in 2008, but succeeded in having all charges dropped.
At the time, Mark Kernes reported for AVN that the judge in that case found the prosecution’s evidence to be “woefully inadequate."
There is no mention of such failures by the federal government in Banks' letter. James Felton, managing partner of G&B Law, LLP, and legal counsel for the Adult Performance Artists Guild, told AVN in an email that the letter by Sen. Banks is a clear distraction from deeper issues that Congress should be addressing.
"His actions intend to make a direct hit on free speech and the rights of performers to earn a living," Banks said.
"OnlyFans and similar sites have provided a much-needed business opportunity for performers to earn a living at a time when the economy poses challenges for performers and non-performers," he added. "Congress should devote its time to solving much more important issues than pornography."
Banks sent a similar letter to the Department of Justice in 2019, and he got nowhere.
Lawmakers in both chambers of Congress have championed similar efforts with no impact. For example, Rep. Ann Wagner, also a conservative Republican who represents portions of Eastern Missouri, has sent multiple letters to federal law enforcement authorities urging the Department of Justice to prosecute OnlyFans and similar companies.
She sent two letters in 2021, and told reporters for Reuters in 2024 that OnlyFans is complicit in facilitating sex trafficking with very little evidence to back such an assertion. Note that Wagner was instrumental in the passage of FOSTA-SESTA in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Bush-era obscenity task force was dissolved by Eric Holder, the attorney general under President Barack Obama. He folded the task force into the ongoing work of the Department of Justice's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS). CEOS is responsible for the enforcement of federal record-keeping laws.
