TMZ in DC: How congressional staff are bracing for the gossip outlet’s descent on Washington

WASHINGTON (CN) — Celebrity news giant TMZ made a splash on Capitol Hill this week, unveiling its dedicated team that will cover Congress and what the gossip outlet’s founder called the convergence of pop culture and politics.

But while TMZ’s new Hill-watchers have been hailed online as harbingers of a new era of political accountability in Washington media, its arrival on Capitol Hill has proven more of a mixed bag for the staffers working for lawmakers now under the scrutiny of the country’s foremost celebrity news organization.

Just hours after they made their formal debut outside Congress Monday afternoon, TMZ’s Capitol team were lauded by social media users who argued producers Charlie Cotton, Jacob Wasserman and Jakson Buhaj would hold lawmakers’ feet to the fire and unmask scandal and intrigue long ignored — or perhaps buried — by more mainstream congressional journalists.

“TMZ is going to call out certain practices in fundraising/lobbying/media that Washington accepted long ago but the rest of the country will find unusual,” said Nu Wexler, a former Senate communications staffer and principal at Washington-based Four Corners Public Affairs, in a post on X.

Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross wrote the outlet would “clear out Congress faster than midterms ever could.”

“Give TMZ a White House press badge for the briefing room,” proclaimed Meghan McCain. “I am not joking.”

The celebrity gossip outlet, founded in 2005 by Harvey Levin, has in recent weeks made overtures toward full-time political journalism. During Congress’ Easter recess, TMZ employed its signature style as it posted shots of lawmakers vacationing, juxtaposing images of members at Disney World and at a castle in Scotland with the partial government shutdown, which has left the Department of Homeland Security unfunded for more than a month.

Speaking via video call to his new Washington bureau on Monday, Levin said TMZ reporters had also shot some video recently that “show how pop culture and politics converge” and raised the idea that his staff could sleep over at lawmakers’ capital residences.

While TMZ’s newly minted Washington correspondents are still getting a lay of the land, congressional staffers are weighing how to engage with the gossip column’s particular brand of journalism.

Courthouse News spoke with several staffers working for lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle about TMZ’s congressional debut. All were granted anonymity in order to speak freely.

Some Capitol employees expressed reservations about the gossip publication’s intentions and impact, but others said they and their colleagues are excited by the prospect of a new team of congressional reporters who they thought would better hold members of Congress accountable at a time when the legislature is being rocked by ethics scandals.

One Democratic Senate aide told Courthouse News staffers are actively preparing their bosses for a potential future run-in with TMZ, noting employees of lawmakers are studying the faces of the outlet’s three Capitol Hill producers to more easily pick them out in the halls of Congress.

The aide said they hoped TMZ’s work in the legislature would be a net positive, pointing out few people outside the Beltway understand the nuances of Capitol Hill politics and having a media crew that brings a less in-the-weeds approach to government could be a good thing. In preparing members to speak with TMZ, they added, congressional staff need to instruct lawmakers to talk to its reporters like laypeople rather than D.C. politicos.

“You have to really make sure that you’re speaking like to a constituent — how you would at a town hall,” the Senate aide said.

TMZ’s Washington correspondents do appear to still be getting their political sea legs. The publication reported Monday that Cotton, Wasserman and Buhaj had arrived ready for work on the first day of the week unaware the House was not in session and the Senate was not scheduled to convene for votes until the evening.

Having TMZ on Capitol Hill does raise some concerns, said the Senate aide, who opined it’s hard to forecast the organization’s intentions.

“Are they here for the right reasons?” they said. “Are they here to actually spread information? Or are they here for clickbait-y hits? Hopefully it’s the prior one — I’m not fully convinced it’s the prior one.”

But a staffer for a House Republican said while they and some other colleagues working in GOP congressional offices were at first concerned about TMZ poking around Capitol Hill, opinions shifted after the outlet’s first day in Congress.

“We’re kind of excited,” said the Republican staffer. “We’re fed up with the injustice that we see all over, especially in the House.”

The congressional aide pointed in particular to the ethics scandal that has for months plagued Representative Tony Gonzales, the Texas congressman who resigned from office Tuesday amid accusations he repeatedly solicited explicit photographs from female staffers.

Arguing there had been a lack of media coverage of Gonzales’ conduct in the months leading up to his resignation, the GOP staffer added TMZ is in a unique position to shed light on similar stories because, in their view, the publication is less afraid of “stepping on toes.”

A House Democratic staffer, meanwhile, told Courthouse News that though TMZ might shine a light on stories the Beltway press doesn’t typically cover, the celebrity news outlet has different goals for its coverage than other reporters who cover Congress daily.

“These people are not interested in how someone’s going to vote on a bill,” the staffer said. “They’re interested in the $5,000 bill they had at dinner last night.”

Predicting TMZ would engage in “gotcha” questioning of lawmakers, the House staffer argued members of Congress should already be prepared for such a possibility, comparing the publication’s new Washington team with campaign trackers — people employed to gather opposition research on political candidates who can occasionally be seen following lawmakers around Capitol Hill.

Much like the possibility of having an unflattering photo or video taken in public, the staffer added, TMZ’s questioning is a variable that would be hard for a member of Congress to prepare for.

And the House Democratic staffer appeared somewhat less convinced than their Senate counterpart that TMZ could lower the barrier of entry for people hoping to understand the inner workings of government. They argued, so far, the organization’s coverage has focused on personalities rather than policy.

“I worry if it’s just consistent negative clickbait, it could maybe lead to further apathy,” said the staffer.

Some of the staffers who spoke to Courthouse News said their colleagues are similarly ambivalent about TMZ’s descent on the Capitol. The Senate aide noted Democrats in the upper chamber are working to build out their own digital presence and that relying on outlets such as TMZ for viral moments could be a dangerous prospect.

Similar conversations are taking place in the House. According to Politico, the chamber’s Democratic Policy and Communications Committee is coordinating with congressional offices to connect staffers with TMZ. The Democrats’ political messaging panel urged staff not to conduct direct outreach with the celebrity news outlet.

“TMZ has a unique way of capturing content, and we want to be as coordinated as possible,” a DPCC aide reportedly told a group of Democratic staffers.

The Republican aide told Courthouse News colleagues in other GOP offices are concerned about their bosses’ interaction with TMZ producers. Some Capitol employees, they told Courthouse News, have been working to find different routes for their members to travel to votes and are ensuring lawmakers are fully staffed when they leave the office.

In their short tenure covering Congress, TMZ has already zigzagged across the Capitol complex, on Monday chasing South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and Texas Senator Ted Cruz. In video clips posted online, Graham refused to comment to reporters about his controversial trip to Disney during the congressional recess. Cruz declined to weigh in on President Donald Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV.

TMZ producers caught Pennsylvania Representative Dan Meuser in the House on Tuesday and peppered him with similar questions about the president’s papal feud.

The gossip outlet has arrived on Capitol Hill at a moment when members of Congress are grappling with a wide-ranging ethics debacle that has engulfed both parties. California Representative Eric Swalwell, a Democrat, joined Gonzales in resigning from the House on Tuesday following accusations he sexually assaulted a former staffer.

Democratic Representative Sheila Cherfilus McCormick and Republican Representative Cory Mills, both from Florida, are under individual scrutiny for possible ethical violations and could both face expulsion from the House in the coming days.

Social media users, framing TMZ’s presence on Capitol Hill as a sea change for political reporting, have already made bold claims about the publication’s impact. Some online have suggested that TMZ played a role in Swalwell’s Monday resignation announcement. It was the San Francisco Chronicle, however, that initially broke the reports of sexual assault accusations against the congressman, which led to his departure.

And prediction market Polymarket posted in a bulletin on its official X account Monday that “multiple congresspeople” were expected to resign this week, tying the unconfirmed report to TMZ’s new Washington bureau which the post said would “expose scandals.”

So far, no other members of Congress besides Swalwell and Gonzales have said they would step down.

The Senate aide who spoke to Courthouse News waved away the online discourse about whether TMZ would change the face of political reporting, calling such an idea “dramatic.” But they acknowledged reporters covering Congress have begun to rely more on viral video content, and the celebrity news outlet’s Washington bureau appeared to be a natural extension of that trend.

“They’re riding the wave for sure, but I don’t think they’re the beacon of ingenuity,” said the Democratic aide.

In its celebrity news coverage, TMZ has become well-known for paying tipsters for photo and video submissions. It’s unclear whether the outlet compensated anyone for the images of lawmakers it published over the Easter break, or whether the organization plans to use such a payment scheme while it operates on Capitol Hill.

A spokesperson for TMZ did not return a request for comment.

But the Republican staffer told Courthouse News the promise of financial compensation is an attractive prospect to some of their colleagues — though they pointed out congressional aides would likely be ethically barred from accepting such a payment.

“That’s a conversation I’ve already heard,” said the GOP aide. “Like, how much would it take you to tell, you know?”

Still, the gossip outlet’s new D.C. bureau is clearly keen to do some more original reporting of its own. Speaking to Levin on Monday, Wasserman recounted his experience roaming the Capitol complex’s Senate office buildings.

“I realized that I want to be a senator, because it’s the cushiest job ever,” Wasserman quipped during his TV appearance. “No one goes to work — they just had this massive two-week vacation, and now they’re coming in tonight to vote — they didn’t work all day today.”

TMZ, for now, lacks a press credential from any of the congressional media galleries, meaning their Washington crew is severely limited in where they can travel within the Capitol itself.