Federal prosecutors have charged a Tampa-area physician with a series of crimes connected to the production of harmful materials involving a child as well as attempts to incite the minor to engage in sexual activity.

According to a Justice Department release, U.S. Attorney Roger B. Handberg announced the arrest of Dr. Stephen Andrew Leedy of St. Petersburg, 59, who faces life in federal prison if he’s convicted. The DOJ release said that Leedy was charged with “three counts of production of child sexual abuse material and two counts of coercing or enticing a minor to engage in sexual activity.”

According to the indictment and subsequent court documents, Leedy, a palliative care physician who specializes in pain management and serious illness symptoms relief, “utilized the username “maximumuncle#9112” to exploit and victimize approximately ten minors online.”

“In online conversations and video chats, Leedy instructed the minors to produce sexually explicit images of themselves and directed them to cut, choke, and hang themselves. In November 2021, Minor Victim 1 was discovered deceased, having hanged herself in front of her phone in a manner consistent with instructions Leedy had previously provided her,” the DOJ release added.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has made protecting children a cornerstone of his administration, pushing for and signing legislation that bars sexually explicit gender-related materials from being introduced to grades K-3.

More recently, DeSantis appeared on Mark Levin’s Fox News program to that topic and others under the guise of how many American institutions were being taken over by the “woke mind virus,” as billionaire Elon Musk calls it, a trend that appears to be abating somewhat after President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans swept the 2024 elections.

“Hasn’t the same mentality in our country, in many ways it’s destroying the will to survive? I mean, the idea that wokeism is at the Department of Defense, that it’s at DHS, that it’s in the FBI, Department of Justice, the CIA, there’s no aspect of our government, law enforcement and intelligence that has not been touched by this poison that promotes physical features, diversity and pronouns, and men are women and women are men, and transition and so forth. This is a poison that is destroying our ability to even think straight, isn’t it?” Levin began the segment.

“Yeah. We are living through an era of misplaced priorities. I think that the left has used these institutions which, you know, think back, Mark, when you were working with [then-Attorney General Edwin Meese] under Reagan, the Department of Justice was revered,” DeSantis responded.

“You think about the Department of Defense. I mean, I served in Iraq as a naval officer. We revered these institutions. The left has really hijacked them and they are using those institutions to promote their social agenda. The problem is, one, this leftism is not good for the country, but it also takes their eye off the ball on focusing what they should be focusing on,” he continued.

“Our military leaders should be focusing on lethal force and being able to defend the country. That is how you deter threats. The FBI should be focusing on its core mission of enforcing the laws against bad people,” DeSantis added. “They’ve taken the lead since 9/11 on counterterrorism.

“I can tell you, in Florida, this is something we have to grapple with because they are not very cooperative with the local officials. They kind of say, you know, they take care of terrorism, but we know they have not been as serious about that as in the past,” DeSantis went on. “And as you mentioned, even in our intelligence agencies, you’ve seen this woke mind virus run amok.

“So January 20th I think gives the country the opportunity, with President Trump coming back in, to clean house, to get these institutions focused on the mission that they were created to do, and actually do the work of protecting the American people,” he said.

“But we are in a big hole right now. I think these last four years have been about as bad of a period of presidential lack of leadership that we have in my lifetime. And I was born at the end of Jimmy Carter’s term, and I would say Biden has done a lot worse than President Carter.”

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