Former CIA officer pleads guilty to sexual assault

A former CIA officer who worked at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City pleaded guilty Tuesday to drugging and sexually assaulting more than 20 women over a 14-year period, the Justice Department said.

In agreement with prosecutors, the former officer, Brian Jeffrey Raymond of La Mesa, California, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Washington to four of the 25 criminal charges he faced: one charge of sexual abuse and abuse of sexual contact. , coercion and seduction and transportation of obscene material.

In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed to drop the remainder of the charges and recommend a sentence of between 24 and 30 years, with lifetime supervised release. Sentencing is set for September 2024, prosecutors said.

Mr. Raymond’s crimes date back to 2006 and as recently as 2020 and took place in multiple countries where he had worked for the U.S. government, prosecutors said.

Mr. Raymond, 47, admitted to drugging and photographing or recording dozens of women while they were nude or partially nude in his government-provided housing in Mexico and in at least one other country, which was not mentioned by name in the court documents.

According to the indictment, three of the charges he faced related to crimes that occurred in the Washington, DC area.

In all, Mr. Raymond abused 28 women over the past fourteen years, prosecutors said.

“Many of the recordings show Raymond touching and manipulating the victims’ bodies while they were unconscious and unable to consent,” the Justice Department said in a statement. press release on Tuesday. “Raymond attempted to delete the explicit photos and videos showing the victims after learning about the criminal investigation.”

Mr. Raymond’s attorney, Howard Bernard Katzoff, could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday evening.

In a statement on Tuesday, the CIA said: “The CIA condemns in the strongest terms the crimes committed by former agent officer Brian Jeffrey Raymond, who was arrested in 2020. As this case shows, we are committed to working with law enforcement to ensure that justice is served.”

The agency added that it had taken “important steps” to combat sexual violence within its ranks, including the creation of an agency focused on “sexual violence and prevention.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia declined to comment.

Raymond’s most recent assaults occurred in 2019 and 2020 in Mexico City, where he lived while on assignment at the U.S. Embassy, ​​according to prosecutors.

According to court documents, he raped six different women in Mexico, with each attack following the same pattern.

Mr. Raymond met women on dating apps like Bumble and Tinder, spoke to them in Spanish and presented himself as a “high-level embassy official in whom the government had placed special trust,” according to an agreed statement of facts filed in court Tuesday .

He drugged the women’s drinks and led them back to his embassy-rented apartment, where he would sexually assault and photograph them while they were unconscious, according to court records.

In some cases, the women regained consciousness when Mr. Raymond attacked them.

The FBI and State Department began investigating Mr. Raymond in May 2020 after Mexican police responded to a call to Mr. Raymond’s apartment in Mexico City for a report of “a naked, hysterical woman in desperate shouted for help” from the balcony, prosecutors said.

The woman told police that she blacked out after drinking the wine Mr. Raymond served her and that she could not remember having sex with him, although she had injuries consistent with vaginal and anal penetration, prosecutors said.

Investigators said they discovered a trail of damning evidence on his electronic devices, including searches on his phones for “fainted gorl” and multiple videos of “fainted” women in his YouTube viewing history.

On his laptop, investigators found searches for “passing out,” “ambien” and “Ambien and alcohol and fainting,” along with similar searches, court records show.

Authorities also recovered about 400 photos and videos of his victims on his iCloud drive, along with dozens of messages he exchanged with women, prosecutors said.

Federal authorities arrested Mr. Raymond in San Diego in October 2020 and initially accused him of photographing a woman he met on Tinder in Virginia in 2017 while she was unconscious.

He was subsequently charged in a superseding indictment in February 2023 in connection with the additional victims.