Delegate David "Elliott" Pritt Faces Federal Sex Charges
A Follow-Up: What We Wrote in March, and What We Know Now
In March, the WASP told you about the final, chaotic hour of the 2026 legislative session, when Raylee’s Law died again on the floor of the House of Delegates. We told you about a bipartisan coalition of senators overriding their own presiding officer to give the bill one last chance. We told you about the coordinated filibuster that killed it anyway. And we told you about Del. David “Elliott” Pritt (R-Fayette), who tried every procedural motion available to him to force a vote, who watched colleagues celebrate the bill’s death, and who put his head on his desk and cried.
“I am sitting at my desk literally in tears because I understand what the ramifications of another year of inaction could be for kids in our state,” Pritt said at the time.
The WASP is not in the business of pretending we knew then what we know now. We didn’t. Few did. But the contrast between March and July is now part of the public record, and the public deserves to see it laid out plainly.
What Happened This Week
On July 22, federal prosecutors charged Pritt, 36, with enticement of a minor under 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b). Pritt made an initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dwane Tinsley. According to the criminal complaint, filed by Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Terrance L. Taylor in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, the alleged conduct spans May 2025 through July 2026 and involves a girl who was in eighth grade when the contact began.
Pritt teaches social studies and history in Fayette County and previously taught middle school. Investigators allege the relationship started on Roblox, moved to Snapchat, and grew steadily more personal, with the complaint alleging that by the end of the girl’s eighth-grade year, Pritt had told her he loved her. By last summer, according to the affidavit, Pritt was sending explicit images of himself and asking her to reciprocate, with the images she sent allegedly becoming “increasingly more explicit” at his direction. The complaint alleges the two exchanged sexually explicit videos through 2025 and into 2026, and that in late 2025 Pritt asked the girl to meet him in his classroom at Oak Hill High School for sexual encounters, which she described to investigators. The last physical encounter is alleged to have occurred around December 2025 or January 2026, but investigators say the Snapchat contact and requests for explicit photos continued into this month.
Investigators allege that on June 20, Pritt messaged the girl warning her not to tell anyone, writing that if it came out, “the state police show up and take your phone and mine and open up hell in our lives. And because of me it would very much not be a low key. It would be in the news. It would be awful. For both of us. And I would lose my entire life.” The girl’s family reported him to police on July 9.
The charge is an allegation. Pritt is presumed innocent unless and until proven otherwise in a court of law.
The Pattern Before Him
It is also worth noting, as MetroNews did, that Pritt won his seat in 2022 by defeating incumbent Republican Austin Haynes after Haynes was accused of sexually propositioning constituents at the Capitol. Pritt was blunt about it at the time, posting that voters had made a “moral decision” and that “there are some mistakes and lapses in character and judgement that just cannot be overlooked or ‘go away.’” He closed that post with a promise to keep “doing the right thing–even when it’s hard.”
The WASP is not drawing a legal conclusion from that history. We are noting that Pritt built part of his public identity, twice, on being the alternative to exactly this kind of allegation.
Why We’re Writing This
We do not enjoy writing this piece. Pritt was one of the people the WASP praised in March for real institutional courage. He stood on the floor, named what he saw, and refused to let colleagues off the hook for running out the clock on a bill meant to protect abused children. We meant what we wrote then. That is precisely why the contrast matters now.
Raylee’s Law exists because a mandatory-reporter system failed a child before her death. The premise of the entire bill (the reason 24 senators overrode their own president to save it, the reason Amy Grady and Ryan Weld physically crossed the Capitol to broker a deal) is that adults entrusted with children’s welfare sometimes betray that trust, and the systems around them need to be built to catch it rather than take their word for it.
Del. Mike Pushkin, the state Democratic Party chairman, said this week that Pritt “can no longer credibly serve the people of the 50th District while facing allegations of this magnitude” and should resign immediately, adding, “No child should ever have to fear the very adults entrusted with their education and well-being. Protecting children must always come before protecting politicians.” House communications director Ann Ali noted that Pritt remains a delegate unless he resigns or the House acts to remove him, and that due process must run its course.
The Bottom Line
The WASP does not know what a jury will find. We do know that the man who wept on the House floor over the state’s failure to protect children is now the subject of a federal complaint alleging he spent over a year grooming one. If the allegations are true, Pritt’s performance of anguish in March was not hypocrisy in the ordinary political sense. It was something closer to the exact danger Raylee’s Law was written to guard against: an adult in a position of trust, telling everyone around him exactly what they wanted to hear.
We will follow this case as it proceeds through federal court, and we will correct the record if the facts warrant it. That is the job. 🐝
The West Virginia WASP is a West Virginia political news, humor, and commentary outlet. The charge described in this piece is an allegation contained in a federal criminal complaint. Pritt is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law.