Editorial cartoonist Darrin Bell, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2019 in part for his artwork that took on the first Trump administration, was arrested on charges of allegedly possessing more than 100 child pornography videos and is being held under $1 million bail.
The Sacramento County Sheriff's Office said investigators connected Bell, 49, to an online account where 134 files of child sex abuse were filed, The New York Times reported.
A search warrant was served at Bell's home Wednesday, where officers found more child pornography videos, including some that had been generated by artificial intelligence.
Bell was taken into custody and is being held at the Sacramento County Main Jail. He is charged with two felonies in connection to the alleged possession of child sex abuse materials, jail records indicated.
Bell's arrest marks the first time Sacramento County authorities have charged a person with possession of computer-generated child sex abuse materials since a law started on Jan. 1 that made the possession of such items a criminal offense.
Bell is a freelance cartoonist who has won several awards for his work. He was the first Black artist to win a Pulitzer for editorial cartoons, and according to the award's website, the prize was given in 2019 for editorial cartoons that "took on issues affecting disenfranchised communities, calling out lies, hypocrisy and fraud in the political turmoil surrounding the Trump administration."
Bell's winning works depicted several cartoons poking fun at the administration and social issues, including one concerning the NFL's National Anthem protests and one of Trump pulling off his "Make America Great Hat" to reveal a hat that says "Make College White Again."
Other cartoons of Bell's include one in 2016 that depicts Trump inappropriately grabbing at the Statute of Liberty, while another from 2023 depicts a split screen of a character in a Make America Great Again Hat shouting "Groomer" alongside that of a Nazi shouting a comparable word in German.
Bell also is the recipient of the 2016 Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning and the 2015 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Editorial Cartooning, according to his biography on Amazon.
Bell's website says he started creating newspaper cartoons professionally in 1995 for several newspapers in California, including the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Oakland Tribune.
Bell co-created the comic strip "Rudy Park" in 1997 for tech magazines, with United Media Syndicating it in 2001. He also launched "Candorville" in 2003 through the Washington Post Writers Group, with King Features Syndicate syndicating it nationally.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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