Trump pardons former Tennessee lawmaker imprisoned in campaign fraud scheme
President Trump pardoned a former Republican Tennessee lawmaker who was sentenced to two weeks in prison for illegally running for financial plans, pleaded guilty in 2022 before he tried to retrieve his request in a failed attempt.
Former state Senator Brian Kelsey announced his pardon in a social media post Tuesday night. He was ordered to report to the minimum security satellite camp held in FCI Ashland, Kentucky on February 24.
According to a copy of the copy provided by Kelsey’s attorney, Kelsey was ordered to be released immediately from prison for his case.
Mark Humphrey / AP 
“May God bless the United States, even though President Trump and others have committed indictment against me over the past four years,” Kelsey said in the Post.
The 47-year-old pleaded guilty in November 2022, accusing him of attempting to raise a campaign from his state legislative seat in exchange for his 2016 congressional bid.
Kelsey was indicted in October 2021. He initially proposed prosecution labeled witch hunting and blamed then-President Joe Biden’s democratic administration. But when a co-defendant pleaded guilty in October of the following year, Kelsey did it very quickly.
He repeated the attack on the Biden administration on Tuesday, saying: “God used Donald Trump to save me from weapons Biden Doj,” referring to the Justice Department. In 2017, during Mr. Trump’s first term, Kelsey’s campaign finance deal sparked complaints from the nonprofit campaign law center with the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department.
Kelsey failed in March 2023’s attempt to cancel his guilty plea.
Kelsey once argued that he entered the confession with an “uncertain heart and a confused mind.” He noted that he and his wife had twin sons born in September 2022, and his father had advanced pancreatic cancer before he died in February 2023.
Kelsey also accepted the plea deal because his attorney suggested he could be subject to probation, which may be based on a statement from an incumbent Kelsey attorney.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Nashville denied a May 2023 plea.
Crenshaw later denied another challenge, with Kelsey accusing prosecutors of violating his plea agreement. However, in September, the judge also allowed Kelsey to leave the prison until the decision was made to appeal. Kelsey’s challenge eventually failed.
Last month, Crenshaw denied another motion from Kelsey, who argued that he had no valid legal counsel and that his claim of innocence was supported by recordings from two main witnesses – co-defendant Joshua Smith and former Republican Rep. Jeremy Durham, who were not held responsible. The judge replied that Kelsey was sentenced to “unconditional confession of guilt” at the perjury office.
Kelsey appealed again when Kelsey accepted the pardon.
Nashville Social Club owner Smith pleaded guilty to one offense under a deal, demanding that he cooperate “fully, truthfully”. He was sentenced to five years of probation.
Kelsey, Smith and others illegally transferred $91,000 in transfers — $66,000 from the Kelsey State Senate Campaign Committee, from a nonprofit that advocates legal justice issues from a nonprofit, providing $25,000 to a national political organization to fund advertising to urge support for Kels’ failed 2016 campaign. The indictment said the plan led to political groups submitting false campaign financial reports and making illegal, excessive campaign donations to Kelsey.
Although the indictment does not name the national political organization, the campaign law center’s 2017 complaint claimed that the American Conservative Coalition is coordinating independent spending with Kelsey’s campaign. The Conservative Coalition of the United States said it has worked with investigators.
Saurav Ghosh, director of the Federal Campaign Financial Reform Bureau of the Election Law Center, said Mr. Trump’s Mr. Kelsey’s pardon “expresses open hostility and contempt, accountability and the rule of law.”
Kelsey, a lawyer from Germantown, was first elected as state representative in 2004. He was later elected to the Senate in 2009. He did not seek re-election in 2022.
Kelsey has served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees civil and criminal law, judicial litigation, etc. His attorney license was suspended in 2022 for pleading guilty.
