Mayor Bradshaw out 2 months after ‘revenge porn’ charges

Nearly two months after he was charged with 50 counts of disseminating “revenge porn” online, Andrew Bradshaw is no longer the mayor of Cambridge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the city announced Jan. 11.

Bradshaw submitted his resignation last Monday, according to a post on the city’s Facebook page. It came after the city’s commissioners voted unanimously Dec. 13 to have the city attorney issue a “formal Complaint to remove the Mayor from office” per the city charter. As a result, it’s unclear whether Bradshaw resigned or was dismissed from his post.

A lawyer for Bradshaw declined to comment for this article. Cambridge Commission President Lajan Cephas could not be reached for comment about the body’s decision.

During the commissioners’ Jan. 24 or Feb. 14 meeting, they will decide on the procedures for a special election to select a mayor to fulfill the remainder of Bradshaw’s term, according to the Facebook post. At 32, Bradshaw had been the city’s youngest mayor on record.

Just a few days after Bradshaw’s arrest in November, the commissioners voted to ask him to resign, but he did not immediately do so.

According to charging documents, police believe Bradshaw repeatedly posed as his ex-girlfriend on Reddit and posted her nude images without her permission. The woman reported the incidents to police, who determined that the Reddit posts were coming from an IP address that provided internet service to Bradshaw’s home.

Prosecutors say that Bradshaw’s conduct violated Maryland’s Revenge Porn Statute, which prohibits “the nonconsensual distribution of a private visual representation of another which exposes their intimate body parts or displays them engaged in sexual activity, with the intent to harm, harass, intimidate, threaten or coerce the person depicted.”

For each of the 50 counts, Bradshaw faces a $5,000 fine and two years in prison. He was released pending trial, which is scheduled for late April, according to online court records.