Matthew Erausquin, a wealthy Alexandria-based attorney and Democratic Party donor, was charged November 19 with sex trafficking underage girls, whom he allegedly met online and lured into having sex with him by offering luxe gifts, cash, and drugs.
Erausquin, a regular donor to Virginia and national Democratic candidates since 2008, is a founding partner at Consumer Litigation Associates, a Virginia firm that specializes in suing the financial and credit-reporting industries.
According to Fox News Erausquin allegedly met several Virginia teens online on a site advertizing as a way for women, called “sugar babies,” to connect with wealthy men – “sugar daddies” – for sex.
Erausquin met his victims on the site, where they falsely claimed to be 18, yet in statements given to federal investigators the girls explained that he knew they were underage, with one girl still wearing braces and another being given a ride back to her high school.
According to several of his victims, Erausquin would meet the girls and then ply them with expensive gifts, cash, and drugs before pressuring them into having sex with him and with each other. When one of the girls threatened to tell the authorities, Erausquin allegedly told her he would sue her for extortion.
In all, financial and social media records link Erausquin to six alleged victims from three different Virginia high schools. According to one of the girls, Erausquin would even send her naked pictures of himself while she was in class.
According to reports from the UK Daily Mail, Erausquin appears to be obsessed with other prominent young women, including Taylor Swift and for Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway’s daughter Claudia, who is 16 years old.
A former girlfriend of Erausquin’s, who dated him as an adult, told The Daily Mail that he sent her video of Claudia Conway and made sexually-explicit comments about the teenager.
“’He sent me a TikTok video of Kellyanne Conway’s daughter Claudia dancing in a bikini saying how much he liked her chest,” the girlfriend, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Daily Mail.
According to campaign finance records, Erausquin has donated to Virginia Democrats former Rep. Glenn Nye (D-Norfolk) and former Delegate and Congresswoman Leslie Byrne (D-Fairfax) as well as several other Democrats including former President Barack Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
It is not clear whether any of the candidates Erausquin has supported will be returning his donations or sending his money to a charity that combats human trafficking.
In the case of Warren, she maintains an active campaign committee and a large donor list, so could easily donate an amount equivalent to what Erausquin donated to her to a survivors or victims rights charity. In the cases of Nye and Byrne, it would make sense for the Democratic Party of Virginia to step up and make such contributions.
As for Obama, swimming in cash with the publication of his latest book— throwing a few thousand to a survivors group or anti-human trafficking organization would be on a par with the rest of us taking the rest of the office out for lunch. All are important substantively and in terms of optics, given that Erausquin was clearly a partisan Democrat donor.
So far, no major media outlets have asked these Democrats about their potential associations with the alleged child abuser, or about their plans to make any donations to these types of groups.