Ron Paul aides avoid jail time in endorsement scheme
Sept. 20, 2016
Two former Ron Paul presidential campaign aides will see no prison time for their roles in a plot to make hidden payments to an Iowa state senator in exchange for his endorsement.
Former campaign chairman Jesse Benton and campaign manager John Tate will instead spend two years on probation and pay a $10,000 fine for crimes that prosecutors said corrupted the 2012 Iowa caucus process. Prosecutors wanted the political operatives each sentenced to serve more than two years in federal prison.
U.S. District Judge John Jarvey said prison sentences usually work best to deter future white-collar criminals. But he considered many factors before giving the men probation, including how much they have already suffered throughout the criminal case, he said.
"Nothing about this sentence is intended to diminish my respect for the decision to prosecute or the good work that the FBI did," Jarvey said before sentencing Tate.
Neither Benton nor Tate spoke with reporters as they left the federal courthouse in Des Moines. Benton smiled widely and held hands with his wife.
Former deputy campaign manager Dimitri Kesari, who was also convicted in the conspiracy, will be sentenced Wednesday morning.
The sentencing hearings signal a close is near to a strange saga in Iowa caucus history that began when then-Iowa Sen. Kent Sorenson shockingly switched his allegiance from the campaign of former U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann to support Paul days before the first-in-the-nation contest. The switch prompted immediate allegations that Sorenson had been paid by the Paul campaign, which the conservative state senator denied in nationally broadcast television interviews.
But emails, financial records and other documents showed the campaign secretly paid $73,000 to a limited liability company controlled by Sorenson through a third-party video production company. Prosecutors argued the men used the scheme so that publicly available campaign expenditure records filed with the Federal Election Commission would show no payments to Sorenson.
There has been no sentencing hearing scheduled yet for Sorenson, who took a plea deal that required him to testify at trial against the three operatives.
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Throughout the case the defendants argued that election law is still unclear about whether a vendor to a political campaign or an operative can be paid through a third party. But
Jarvey said during Benton's sentencing hearing that he does not doubt the hidden payments were illegal.
"I haven't believed and do not believe that there is an argument to be made about the legality of this conduct," he said...
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/st...mann/90742638/
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