President Trump has forgiven a former Tennessee senator who spent two weeks in prison for his role in the campaign finance fraud scheme.
According to prisoner records, former Republican Rep. Brian Kelsey, who was released from a minimal security satellite camp in FCI Ashland, Kentucky on Tuesday, his lawyer said he received a generous letter from the president. Attorney Joy Longnecker provided a copy of the letter to the New York Times on Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors indicted Kelsey in 2021 for five detectives resulting from a 2016 failed Congressional bid. He pleaded guilty to an arrangement with the prosecutor in 2022, but he later tried to withdraw from it – a motion denied.
Federal prosecutors accused Kelsey of trying to hide the $91,000 move to support Congressional bids. They also said he was illegally coordinated with external groups to make independent political spending in favor of his campaign.
Kelsey, 47, repeatedly denounced his legal predicament for saying he was weaponising the Justice Department during the Biden administration, and repeated Trump's favorite lines during his political comeback.
“God saved me from Biden Dozi, who used Donald Trump to paint his weapon,” Kelsey wrote on X on Tuesday, announcing that he had received a pardon.
He continued: “God blesses America.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. He also did not speak for the U.S. Lawyer's Office in Nashville, where the case was indicted.
Campaign Legal Centre, a watchdog group that urged the Justice Department to investigate Kelsey in 2017 on funding for Congressional bids, criticised the pardon.
Sauraf Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the Centre, said in a statement Wednesday that the pardon “indicating open hostility and light emptying to accountability and the rule of law.”
“Kelsey's actions violated laws designed to focus soft money to strengthen federal campaigns, combat election corruption and maintain transparency.” “His pardon sends a message that such brave misconduct will not affect such brave misconduct.”
Kelsey, who represents the Memphis area of the Tennessee Legislature, joins both the terms of the prominent and ambiguous criminals who secured a pardon from Trump in his first few weeks at the White House. Many of them rely on the common frustrations the president shares, casting their status as victims of political witch hunts and prosecutor misconduct.
Some of the more notable figures recognized for leniency by Trump are almost all of the 1,600 people charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 attacks, which are attacks on Capitol. Last month he signed the full pardon of Rod R. Blagoevich, a former Democratic governor of Illinois, who was convicted of corruption in 2011 for planning to sell a vacant Senate seat by Barack Obama to become president in 2011.
In 2022, Kelsey pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy, each count he created and accepted, and two counts that violated federal regulations on political funds.
Co-defendant Joshua Asmith, owner of the Nashville Social Club, was sentenced to five years of probation after pleading guilty to one detective count in the case.
However, Kelsey tried to withdraw his guilty plea in 2023, claiming that the lawyers who previously represented him gave him the impression that he would be on probation. The lawyer himself and former chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee, Kelsey argued that his “lack of experience with the criminal justice system” contributed to his decision. He also said he was under emotional obsession, dealing with his terminally ill father, a newborn twin and his three-year-old daughter.
Michael Levenson Reports of contributions.
