Accused Of Possessing Child Porn, WI Veterans Board Chair Resigns

FRANKLIN, WI — A Franklin man who was accused of saving child pornography is no longer the chairman of the Wisconsin Board of Veterans Affairs.

Curtis Schmitt Jr, 38, was charged in Milwaukee County Court in January with three counts of possession of child pornography. He has since pleaded not guilty to the charges, online court records show.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Monday Schmitt has sent a resignation letter to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a democrat. The board's website now shows Schmitt's previous appointment to District 1 as vacant.

Schmitt, who was also listed as a member of the Franklin Finance Committee and the Franklin Community Development Authority, was removed from those local posts during a Franklin Common Council meeting in February.

Republican Gubernatorial candidate Kevin Nicholson posted a video to Twitter on Monday in which he says he filed a complaint saying Evers should remove Schmitt. According to the report by the Journal Sentinel, aides for Evers said a formal complaint by a taxpayer would have been necessary to remove Schmitt from office.

Evers' administration says they sent a request to Schmitt to resign shortly after the charges were filed on Jan. 23, The Associated Press reported on March 24, but Curtis hadn't responded to the request until Monday's resignation letter.

The criminal complaint against Schmitt says investigators discovered three separate files of child pornography that Schmitt had saved to a Dropbox account.

Schmitt told investigators he receives nude photos via an account he has on Snapchat, and that some of those photos and videos were occasionally of child pornography, the complaint said.

Schmitt also said he came across child pornography on Snapchat "a lot and its [sic] all the time," the complaint said. Schmitt claimed to investigators he had saved the child pornography and uploaded it to Dropbox for the purpose of reporting it, the criminal complaint says.

When investigators had confronted Schmitt with the photos they uncovered, Schmitt had acknowledged the people pictured appeared to be children, according to the criminal complaint.