A federal judge has rejected U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s first barrage of defense attacks on the indictment against the nine-term Nebraska congressman.
U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. denied four of Fortenberry’s motions to dismiss charges and a fifth motion to disqualify a prosecutor the defense contends should be called as a witness in the case.
In a December hearing, Blumenfeld had sharply questioned Fortenberry attorney John Littrell’s attempt to disqualify lead prosecutor Mack Jenkins, who heads up a division that handles public corruption cases. One of the charges came because, prosecutors allege, Fortenberry didn’t come clean to Jenkins.
Blumenfeld asked whether defense attorneys would push for entire offices of prosecutors to be disqualified over involvement in an investigation. “How far does that go?” Blumenfeld asked at the Dec. 11 hearing.
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Fortenberry, a Republican who has represented eastern Nebraska’s 1st District since 2005, is charged with three felonies — two counts of making false statements to federal agents and one count of seeking to conceal the source of $30,000 in “conduit” political contributions from a 2016 California fundraiser.
The funds originated with Gilbert Chagoury, a Paris-based Nigerian, who purportedly directed the donations to Fortenberry because of a shared interest in protecting Christians from persecution in the Middle East. It is illegal for foreigners to donate to U.S. political campaigns.
In his rulings last week, the judge also rejected Fortenberry’s defense team’s motions to:
Dismiss one of the three felony counts because it involved the same fact pattern as another charge and therefore was redundant.
Dismiss the indictment on the allegation that prosecutors “venue shopped” and filed it in California, even though Fortenberry “has no meaningful connection to California” and is based in Nebraska.
Dismiss the indictment for “failure to allege materiality,” on the notion that Fortenberry’s statements to investigators were not substantive in the course of an investigation.
Dismiss one of the counts because it “fails to allege that Congressman Fortenberry had a duty to disclose” what he had been told about where the campaign funds came from.
The judge rejected all of those motions.
In a prepared statement, Chad Kolton, a spokesman for Fortenberry’s campaign, said the “case still has enormous flaws.”
“Mr. Fortenberry has always had great faith in the American people’s ability to judge what is fair and just,” Kolton said. “Nebraskans will see this case clearly for what it is: a California prosecutor’s attempt to use deceptive investigative tactics to set up a widely-respected Member of Congress.”
One of the charges against Fortenberry grew out of a July 2019 interview in Washington, D.C., in which Jenkins, an assistant U.S. attorney based in Los Angeles, asked some of the questions posed to Fortenberry. Prosecutors allege that Fortenberry lied during that interview, and an earlier interview at his Lincoln home, about the origin of the $30,000.
They claim that Fortenberry had been informed that the money “probably” came from Chagoury during a 2018 phone call from the organizer of the California fundraiser who, by then, was cooperating with the FBI.
The embattled congressman still has other challenges ahead. A hearing on the next set of challenges is expected next week.