Senator Mike Maroney, chairman of the Health and Human Resources Committee, is publicly questioning how allegations of prostitution solicitation have been handled by local authorities.
“That is untrue,” he said today, followed by a long pause.
Maroney, R-Marshall, faces a misdemeanor prostitution charge that has been lingering for 14 months. Then on August 5, a new allegation implicated Maroney in another prostitution arrest.
The senator issued a statement today that was the focus of an Intelligencer newspaper story in Wheeling and then appeared on MetroNews’ “Talkline.”
“It’s totally untrue,” Maroney said on “Talkline. “The night they chose to get this fake, coerced, whatever, confession by this girl I wasn’t even home.”
.@DrMikeMaroney joins @HoppyKercheval to discuss the controversial allegations surrounding him for the last year. WATCH: https://t.co/wkudfIRZCB pic.twitter.com/gmS6Tx0drX
— MetroNews (@WVMetroNews) October 21, 2020
He questioned repeated court delays in the first case, suggesting the case was being dragged out intentionally to his political disadvantage. Maroney is being challenged for election by Democrat Josh Gary.
“They charged me over a year ago,” he said. “It’s totally fake and fictitious.”
Maroney raised issues with the Marshall County Prosecutor’s handling of both cases, citing Assistant Prosecutor Joe Canestraro, a Democrat who serves in the House of Delegates. Canestraro, who is now running for Marshall County Prosecutor, said today that he can’t comment on the case.
The Marshall County Prosecutor’s Office, which couldn’t be reached right away today, has asked for a special prosecutor to step in.
But “Any conflict with Assistant Prosecutor Canestraro would not ‘flow up’ to the prosecutor,” the office stated in its request to be disqualified from the case to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
“Further, the Marshall County Prosecutor’s Office has not made this a ‘political case,'” stating that the office has not made any statements to media about it. “Rather, defendant and his counsel have made this a political case by going on to said media with allegations of impropriety.”
The August 5 allegation involved a woman with an active arrest warrant leaving Maroney’s home. She was seen by a local police officer who ran the registration on the truck she was driving and discovered it didn’t match a vehicle, so the officer pulled her over.
“Brandy Anne Cecil has been previously identified by law enforcement engaging in illegal prostitution, including advertising herself on various prostitution websites and her telephone number was located on [Maroney’s] cellular phone via search warrant through his cellular phone provider,” according to a criminal complaint.
She admitted to engaging in prostitution, according to the complaint.
In the earlier case, Maroney was among eight men arrested in Glen Dale in August, 2019. A criminal complaint in that case alleged someone used Maroney’s cell phone to solicit a prostitute.
The criminal complaint describes text messages sent from the cell phone to a local woman, who requested a photograph. The request was initially resisted, but eventually a photograph was sent.
That case has been delayed several times, sometimes at the request of Maroney and his lawyer. The most recent delay resulted from the request for a special prosecutor.
“I don’t understand how they can make this last for a year,” Maroney said today.
Democrat Josh Gary, who is running against Maroney, said the allegations are important to a significant number of voters in the area.
“A lot of people it is on their mind, but some people are of the mind that they’re not surprised,” Gary said in a telephone interview today.
“This has been going on for well over a year. So the new allegations that come out they’re like, ‘Oh, yep, it happened again. They’re not surprised.’
“Others want to know where he was during the early parts of the pandemic. He was nowhere to be found until the last month or so, and he’s head of the health committee. So where’s the leadership?”
Gary pushed back on Maroney’s allegations that the cases have been stacked against him.
“I think he’s just scared,” Gary said, “and he’s doing everything he can to make up reasons as to why everything is against him.”