He got tried by the feds even though the investigation was through Army CID. He got convicted in February and was sentenced last week to 20 years.
There were some aggravating factors, most notably that the got a search warrant for the contents of his phone and found several chats where he was enticing actual underage girls, not just a CID agent that he thought was an underage girl. Which, amusingly for us, the warrant was based in part on his past experience as a prosecutor having prosecuting CSAM cases, I guess on the theory that "hey, he had access to this stuff in the past so it might be there now?" Which is not how it works and incredibly stale; I'd have to re-read it.
Anyway, the kicker was that they got this information from one of the citations on a decoration. Basically, at the end of your tour, if you don't totally suck, you'll get a medal commensurate with rank and performance which outlines your accomplishment, puffed up to an almost unrecognizable degree because that's how we do it. His referenced all his experience in prosecuting sex offenders....
He also had experience in doing these to catch a predator (TCAP) cases. Like every JAG, I read the indictment/information (I'm not up on fed crim pro, whatever they used to support the charges), and the agent did all the things they always do in those cases that, if you know how they work, should really tip you off.
He also had bragged about spending a lot of time in Thailand pre-service which, in light of all this, ewwww.
Finally, he had won (prior to all this) the JAG-Corps wide award for "best young JAG", which typically goes to the "best" (on paper) Major (who is often pushing if not on the wrong side of 40, making "young" a bit of a misnomer). Yeah, maybe not our best decision.
JAG gets 20 years