NBC 4 in Washington, D.C. decided to investigate bureaucrats who spend their time on the clock looking at pornography. The news station sent FOIA requests to 12 federal agencies, among them the departments of Justice, Transportation, Labor, Commerce, Energy, HHS, Social Security and the EPA. They asked for information on the most egregious cases. What they received was evidence on nearly 100 individuals who had been found spending “copious” amounts of time looking at porn while on the taxpayer’s dime. From NBC 4:

At the Environmental Protection Agency, inspector general memos showed at least two employees at the agency’s Washington, D.C., offices admitted viewing large quantities of pornographic material at their work spaces. In one case, the employee acknowledged watching porn for up to six hours a day for “several years.” In the second case, at the agency’s Office of Water on Constitution Avenue, an employee was suspended for five days after being seen watching pornographic videos at a work terminal…

At the Department of Commerce, internal investigators found a patent and trademark employee made 1,800 connections to pornographic websites. According to memos released by the agency’s inspector general’s office, the employee told investigators, “When I am working hard, I go to these images to take a mental break.”

NBC 4 put together a map showing dozens of other instances including an FBI employee who was caught and later confessed to looking at child pornography at work. And in Arizona, a DOJ employee was found to have accessed 2,500 adult sites from work and saved over 1,000 images to his computer.

This is not the first time federal employees have been caught doing this. In 2015, CBS News reported on the EPA employee mentioned above who was caught looking at porn up to 6 hours a day while at work. EPA Director Gina McCarthy was asked by Congress why he hadn’t been fired and replied, “I actually have to work through the administrative process, as you know.” That process allows employees to appeal their own termination, something which can take years to resolve.

Here’s the report from NBC 4: