National File faces a lawsuit from Taylor Loren Staubs after exposing explicit photos from Washington High School—reporting that triggered her firing and a grand jury investigation.
A disgraced former school counselor is suing National File a year after she was fired by Jefferson County Public Schools for producing pornographic images of herself on school property.
Images published by National File were enough to convince the Jefferson County School Board to convene a meeting to fire Taylor Loren Staubs within days of the publication of the photos.
That initial report resulted in the opening of a grand jury investigation and the appointment of Special Prosecutor John Ours to investigate the potential criminality.
Taylor Staubs, a former forensic interviewer, was terminated from Washington High School for producing pornography and now faces grand jury investigation.
Readers can watch the board’s meeting during which Staubs was fired here, and below.
Staubs’s step-father, Judge R. Steven Redding, resigned his office after the scandal broke, ostensibly in an effort to avoid further entangling himself with potential criminal liability, thus protecting his pension.
Gov. Morrissey replaced Redding with another Jefferson establishment jurist, Judge Kinser.
The salacious images of Staubs were circulated widely by Staubs herself in online chat groups which included Staubs’s “fans”.
Staubs would send puerile text messages accompanying the nude photos of herself.
In one note, Staubs remarked directly about her habit of going commando, or without underwear.
“I know it’s time to do laundry when I’m out of every single pair of panties,” she wrote to her fans.
National File reported:
Taylor Loren Staubs, 31, is alleged to have taken highly explicit photos in her office and various other rooms in Washington High School, during school hours on a near-daily basis. A source close to the investigation stated that Staubs would then send the pornographic images to men and post them in Facebook chats, as well as a large Discord channel for a sex club in Pennsylvania.
On October 26, a criminal complaint was filed against Taylor Staubs with the Charles Town Police Department. The following day, authorities met with a witness who shared censored photos of Staubs with School Resource Officer Michael Lipscomb, who confirmed the images were taken in Staubs’s office and other rooms in the high school. Lipscomb, who works with Staubs at the school, could not confirm if there was a lock on the door to Staubs’s office, which is only accessible by walking through a student-filled classroom.
Staubs’s fans would reply to each other in her pornographic chat groups.
“I just get so distracted looking at you in that dress, Ms Loren,” one wrote, evidently referring to her in her role as a teacher.
“Ms. Loren is one finance piece of ace,” another wrote, quoting a Chris Farley line about Veronica Vaughn from the Adam Sandler film Billy Madison.
Staubs engaged with her fans, replying, “Now, a teacher would give you both detention for that kind of behavior. I’ll guide you both in the right direction.”
Despite being assigned to investigate the allegations of widespread criminality, and producing approximately 1,400 pages of investigative material, Special Prosecutor Ours began dragging his feet and refusing to charge any of the criminals with any of the crimes they committed, according to law enforcement sources close to the investigation.
As a result, National File publisher Noel Fritsch filed an application in May to present charges to a grand jury for further investigation.
Fritsch invoked one of the oldest accountability mechanisms in the Anglo-American legal tradition: the citizen’s right to bring a criminal complaint directly to a grand jury, bypassing the prosecutor’s office entirely.
The most prominent target of the grand jury application is Judge Redding, a 2018 appointee to the bench whose name was on Governor Patrick Morrisey’s “short list” of four candidates for a West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals vacancy until National File’s November 2025 reporting derailed the nomination.
At the center of the petition is what the filing calls “the forged 2017 Domestic Violence Protective Order” — a sworn court document filed in Berkeley County Magistrate Court in 2017 in the name of Taylor Loren Staubs and on behalf of her then-minor daughter against Staubs’s then-husband.
The petition alleges that the body of the document was authored by R. Steven Redding — who was a private attorney at the time, six months from his 2018 appointment to the bench — and was deployed through Magistrate Norris to manufacture a false history of family violence for his step-daughter, Taylor Loren Staubs. That forged document, the petition alleges, was the foundation of Staub’s ex-husband 2019 arrest warrants, his 2022 conviction by Judge Faircloth, and his immediate discharge from the United States military six years short of retirement.