U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska was convicted Thursday of charges of lying to federal authorities over an illegal $ 30,000 contribution to his campaign by a foreign billionaire in a 2016 Los Angeles fundraiser .
A California federal jury found the nine-year-old Republican guilty of one count of forgery and concealment of material facts and two counts of perjury. Fortenberry was charged after having two interviews with FBI agents investigating the donor, Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian billionaire of Lebanese descent.
Fortenberry showed no emotion when the verdict was read, but one of his daughters in the front row of the gallery began to cry uncontrollably. After the jury left the room, Fortenberry approached his wife and two daughters and hugged them. He then kissed his wife on the lips and returned to a seat next to his lawyer.
Jae C. Hong / AP
The judge set the sentence for June 28.
Fortenberry, 61, argued at trial that prosecutors knew the deputy did not know about the contribution, but ordered an informant to provide the information in a 10-minute call with the intent of trying to prosecute him.
His lawyers said FBI agents used false pretenses to interview Fortenberry almost a year later and accused him of not remembering all the details of the conversation.
Each count carries a possible sentence of five years in prison and fines.
The trial could end the political career of a congressman seen as a reliable Conservative who achieved easy victories but is not a well-known name outside of Nebraska. Offenders are eligible to run and serve in Congress, but the vast majority choose to resign under threat of expulsion.
Fortenberry, who is running for re-election, had great political success when prosecutors announced the charges, and his indictment has already divided Nebraska Republicans who supported him for years.
The jurors deliberated for about two hours before reaching their verdict.
prosecutors argued Fortenberry lied about what he knew about the illicit donation during an interview at his Lincoln home in March 2019 and a follow-up meeting four months later in Washington.
Defense attorneys said the FBI “created” Fortenberry after a national investigation erupted over foreign money channeled to members of Congress. They said Fortenberry’s flaw was to voluntarily meet with agents and prosecutors to help them investigate and have a faulty memory.
Celeste Fortenberry, the legislator’s wife, was the final witness in the case and stated that her husband did not remember the day they met. He said he hated making fundraising calls and was often on “autopilot” when he made them.
Lawyers on both sides of the lawsuit focused their final arguments on one of those calls with Dr. Elias Ayoub, who organized fundraising for Fortenberry at his Los Angeles home in 2016.
Ayoub, who was cooperating with the FBI, told Fortenberry during the recorded call in June 2018 that he distributed $ 30,000 to friends and family who attended the fundraiser so they could write checks on the Fortenberry campaign.
The doctor said the money had been provided to them by a partner and probably came from Gilbert Chagoury, a billionaire living in Paris. Chagoury admitted in 2019 that he had channeled $ 180,000 in illegal contributions to four campaigns and agreed to pay a $ 1.8 million fine.
The three men in the alleged money-making scheme in Fortenberry were all of Lebanese descent and had ties to In Defense of Christians, a Fortenberry-backed nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting religious persecution in the Middle East. .
Fortenberry asked Ayoub by phone call to arrange another fundraiser with supporters of his cause.
In 2019, Fortenberry denied FBI agents that he had received any funds from a foreigner or through so-called conduit contributions, where the money was distributed to straw donors.
Fortenberry, unaware that officers had recorded his call with Ayoub, said it would be “horrible” for the doctor to make a statement about the origin of the funds.
Defense attorney John Littrell said the recording of the call only showed what was heard at the end of Ayoub and not what Fortenberry heard, who had poor cell phone reception.
If Fortenberry hadn’t heard just three crucial words, he might have missed what Ayoub was trying to tell him where the money came from, Littrell said. The fact that Fortenberry didn’t remember the call more than a year later was understandable, he said.
“This is a memory test that each of us would fail,” Littrell said.
Littrell said the government deceived Fortenberry about the purpose of visiting his home, telling him it was a national security issue, essentially ambushing him and his family. Prosecutors then packed the statements to make them look more incriminating, using things Fortenberry said and omitting them to make them more convicting, he said.
Littrell said the $ 36,000 his client raised in Los Angeles, most illegally, was a drop in the bucket for a congressman in an uncompetitive district with a healthy war chest.
“Do you think it would jeopardize his $ 30,000 reputation when he had $ 1.5 million?” Littrell said. “This is not possible.”
- In:
- Nebraska
- United States House of Representatives
Add Comment