Former gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler is expected to serve nine months behind bars, according to a plea agreement filed in Hancock County Superior Court.
In exchange for pleading guilty to all four counts of possession of sexually explicit material of a child under 12, Cutler, 76, will face four years of incarceration with all but nine months suspended, followed by six years of probation.
He is expected to enter his new pleas at the Hancock County Superior Court Thursday afternoon.
Cutler was arrested and charged in March 2022. He remains free on $50,000 bail and has been allowed to use the internet and a smartphone since last May with strict monitoring of his online activity by a third-party company that he agreed to pay for.
He has waived his right to be indicted by a grand jury.
While on probation, he must continue paying for a state-approved internet-monitoring service. He will be subject to random searches of his electronic devices, and any home, business, place or vehicle, and he will have to share all login and password information with his probation officer.
He will also be required to register as a sex offender for 10 years.
Cutler has also agreed to pay $5,000 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which prompted the investigation that led to his charges.
Dropbox, a file-hosting system, reported to the center in December 2021 that an employee had found a file uploaded by Cutler that appeared to depict the abuse of a girl between the ages of 4 and 6.
The center, a nonprofit organization that helps investigate the abduction and sexual exploitation of children, sent the state a tip in late 2021 which helped initiate a two-month investigation and search warrants at his homes in Brooklin, where he was arrested, and a townhouse in Portland, which he later sold.
Police found thousands of videos depicting the sexual abuse of minors on electronic devices in Cutler’s possession, according to court records that were unsealed last May.
Cutler and his wife, Melanie, a psychiatrist specializing in adolescent care, were in the Brooklin home when police conducted their search, according to records.
Police recorded Cutler telling his wife that the search warrant “was for child pornography” and that police would “probably find some on one of his computers,” Maine State Police Special Agent Glenn Lang wrote in an affidavit for Cutler’s arrest.
Throughout the search, Cutler attempted to call his attorneys while agents seized dozens of electronic devices. This included USB and flash drives and external hard drives stored near a sleep apnea machine that Cutler said he used in the upstairs bedroom. Agents later viewed the files on the devices and discovered “a very large number” of child exploitation videos, including videos of girls estimated to be about 4 years old being sexually assaulted.
Analysts found “literally thousands of very young children being sexually abused” while sifting through the terabytes of information the following day.
“I feel that because Mr. Cutler’s high volume of very young child pornography and extreme wealth while facing a felony prosecution he is a very high flight risk,” Lang wrote.
Cutler, a lawyer, ran for governor twice as an independent and used his personal wealth to bankroll both campaigns. He lost by less than 2 percentage points to Republican Paul LePage in a multi-candidate race in 2010. He lost again in 2014.
Years earlier, Cutler served as an aide to the late Democratic Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, and later as a top adviser on environmental and energy issues for former President Jimmy Carter. Cutler went on to serve as an environmental attorney and founded the Cutler & Stanfield law firm in Washington, D.C.
After a career in Washington, the Bangor native returned to Maine and lived in Cape Elizabeth, where he owned a mansion that he later sold for $7.55 million to a nephew of former President George H.W. Bush. In 2015, the University of Maine System hired him to oversee the creation of a new graduate business and law school in Portland, an initiative he resigned from in 2017.
Up until police searched his home last March, Cutler was board president of the Lerner Foundation, a Portland-based nonprofit overseeing projects across Maine that support rural students pursuing higher education. Director Don Carpenter said at the time the foundation was “deeply disturbed” by the charges, and that Cutler was involved in “high-level strategy and governance and did not directly interface with students who participated in grant funded programming.”
This story will be updated.
Ellsworth American staff writer Jennifer Osborn contributed to this report.