11/22/2022
Tennessee State Senator Brian Kelsey pled guilty on Tuesday to violating campaign finance laws and conspiring to defraud the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
The charges were part of a scheme to benefit Kelsey’s 2016 campaign for U.S. Congress, according to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ).
The 44-year-old congressman from Germantown admitted to unlawfully funneling money from multiple sources, including his own Tennessee State Senate campaign committee, to his authorized federal campaign committee, court records show.
The Department of Justice said that Kelsey and his co-conspirators also caused a national political organization to make illegal, excessive contributions to Kelsey’s federal campaign committee by secretly coordinating with the organization on advertisements supporting Kelsey’s federal candidacy and to cause false reports of contributions and expenditures to be filed with the FEC.
Overall, the Department of Justice said that Kelsey and his co-conspirators moved $91,000 to a national organization to fund advertisements urging voters to support Kelsey in the August 2016 primary elections. $66,000 of that money came from Kesley’s State Senate campaign committee, the DOJ said.
Kelsey pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the FEC and aiding and abetting the acceptance of excessive contributions on behalf of a federal campaign.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 9, 2023 and faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison on each count.
The guilty plea comes after Kelsey originally pled not guilty but then requested a court date to change that not-guilty plea.
Source (Yahoo)
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