Sean Patrick Maloney Gave Taxpayer-Funded Job to Longtime Family Friend With No Political Experience

Democrats

Dem congressman paid tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to husband’s ‘old friend’ who simultaneously worked full-time as a magazine editor

Getty Images Collin Anderson • November 1, 2022 4:59 am

New York Democratic congressman Sean Patrick Maloney gave a taxpayer-funded job to a longtime family friend who had no political experience and simultaneously worked full-time as a magazine editor, records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.

Maloney from September 2019 to July 2020 employed Hollywood journalist Kevin Sessums in his official office, according to House disbursement disclosures. On Facebook, Sessums has repeatedly boasted of knowing Maloney and his husband, Randy Florke, “for 30 years,” and Sessums regularly refers to Florke as “an old friend.” It’s unclear exactly what Sessums did in Maloney’s office—the Democrat’s spending records merely list Sessums as a “staff” member and offer no specific title—but Sessums almost certainly did not work for Maloney full time. That’s because he worked as editor-in-chief of his own entertainment magazine—sessumsMagazine.com—during his entire time in Maloney’s office, according to his LinkedIn, which does not mention his work for Maloney. 

This is not the first time Maloney, who is facing a surprisingly difficult reelection bid against Republican Mike Lawler, has used taxpayer funds to pay one of his husband’s personal friends. From March to October 2021, Maloney’s office paid thousands to Erick Ramos, who also worked as Florke’s personal trainer at the time. The ordeal prompted a political headache for Maloney, with Lawler accusing the Democrat of thinking “that ethics rules don’t apply to him.” “That’s what happens when you’ve been a Washington insider for too long,” the Republican’s campaign told the Daily Mail.

Maloney paid Sessums, who did not return a request for comment, roughly $3,000 a month in taxpayer funds, allowing his husband’s “old friend” to pocket nearly $40,000 during the 10-month gig. Sessums wrote a daily column for his magazine as he collected the taxpayer-funded cash—in some of those columns, Sessums detailed personal travel to New Orleans, Mississippi, and London on days in which the House was in session. 

Sessums’s job in Maloney’s office was his first in politics—prior to his role as an apparently part-time House staffer, Sessums interviewed A-list celebrities as a Vanity Fair writer, a job he lost after a falling-out with his editor that led to “a long descent into substance abuse, followed by unemployment and

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