Less than two weeks after a mistrial, federal prosecutors on Monday filed a motion to dismiss conspiracy and fraud charges against former Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Gillum.
The move to drop the charges against Gillum, a former Tallahassee mayor, comes after jurors on May 4 acquitted him of lying to federal investigators but were unable to reach a verdict on charges that he and his political mentor, Sharon Lettman-Hicks, bilked political contributors out of money and illegally steered it to Gillum for his personal use.
The charges against Gillum came after a lengthy FBI public corruption probe that also snared Scott Maddox, a former Tallahassee city commissioner, and former Florida Democratic Party chairman. Maddox pleaded guilty in 2019 and is serving time in federal prison. The investigation also netted Maddox’s long-serving aide, Paige Carter-Smith, and prominent businessman J.T. Burnette.
Gillum and Lettman-Hicks were indicted last year on charges related to activities that took place between 2016 and 2019, as Gillum’s political stature blossomed. Gillum and Lettman-Hicks were on trial for two weeks before the jury cleared Gillum of lying to investigators and deadlocked on the other charges. During opening arguments on April 18, prosecutors laid out a complex set of transactions involving contributions from a handful of non-profit organizations to P&P Communications, a company controlled by Lettman-Hicks. The indictment accused her of illegally steering campaign-related funds to Gillum for his personal use.
The indictment accused the defendants of having “engaged in an ongoing and evolving scheme to defraud by unlawfully soliciting and obtaining funds from various entities and individuals through false and fraudulent representations and promises that the funds would be used for a legitimate purpose, but instead using third parties to divert a portion of those funds to P&P, which Lettman-Hicks then fraudulently provided to Gillum for his personal use disguised as payroll payments.
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