Wrongly Imprisoned Former Rep. Steve Stockman Files Appeal

Former Republican Congressman Steve Stockman is fighting back against The Swamp. He was targeted by powerful Democrats and wrongly convicted of misusing nonprofit funds. Corrupt, left-leaning prosecutors in the Department of Justice went after him because he called for the arrest of the IRS’s Lois Lerner, was the first to expose Obama’s ransom payment for Bowe Bergdahl, and aggressively rooted out corruption under both Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s presidencies. He made the Drudge Report during his most recent term in office more than any other House member.

The reality is, Stockman complied with very complex, technical laws — but prosecutors chose to interpret those laws differently in order to confuse the jury. Now, Stockman is fighting back from prison, where he is serving a 10 year sentence. His attorneys filed an appeal with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week.

What happened was Stockman solicited funds for nonprofits with which he was affiliated with in order to set up a conservative youth political training program. One of the nonprofits put out a mailer explaining the differences in positions between himself and his opponent while running for U.S. Senate in Texas.

Prosecutors claimed the mailer constituted “express advocacy” and so violated campaign finance law since it was put out by a nonprofit. But the mailer never said vote for Stockman. It merely laid out, educationally, the differences between the two candidates. The well-known 1976 campaign case Buckley v. Valeo states that express advocacy must contain words like “vote for,” “elect,” “support,” “vote against,” etc. The mailer contained none of those words.

The prosecution cleverly referred to Stockman’s nonprofits as “sham nonprofits,” in order to taint the jury. They didn’t bother telling the jury that nonprofits could send out educational mailers. The IRS states about nonprofits, “Certain 'voter education' activities conducted in a non-partisan manner may not constitute prohibited political activity under section 501(c)(3) of the Code.”

The prosecution also said Stockman was guilty of “materially misrepresenting” what he was soliciting funds for. But they never identified any material misrepresentations. So there was no fraud. The donors knew what their money was going for. Unfortunately for Stockman, one of the two donors in question died before the trial started so he could not be questioned. The prosecution used that to their advantage.

Prosecutors also threw in the vague counts of mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. Those are commonly alleged when prosecutors don’t have a good case against someone and need to throw in some catchalls. They merely mean that someone used the mail or telephone/internet while they were committing a crime, and money transferred places while a crime was being committed. The problem with those counts is Stockman did not commit any crimes, so those counts are meaningless.

Prosecutors confused the jury by giving them incorrect jury instructions. They gave them the impression that any activity that could be considered “political” in nature was illegal. They also made it appear that any money spent by a nonprofit that benefited an individual was illegal. They tricked the jury.

Stockman was also convicted of filing a false tax return. But similar to campaign finance filings, usually there is an opportunity for the filer to amend it; the government doesn’t go into full prosecution mode. Stockman failed to report as income money given to his nonprofit for the youth education center. But he wasn’t receiving any income. It certainly doesn’t fit the definition of income, and he had no reason to think it was required to be included, so his actions weren’t willful and consequently didn’t fit the definition of filing a false tax return.

This comes down to the First Amendment. Stockman had a free speech right to raise and spend money for nonprofit organizations and political campaigns. Campaign finance and related laws were distorted and used against him to destroy his career and stop him. If corrupt DOJ prosecutors can get away with taking him down, who’s next? There are plenty of conservative activist members of Congress. This can now happen to any of them if it’s not corrected. Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump need to thoroughly clean out the DOJ from top to bottom. Hopefully the appeals court will see through this witch hunt, reverse the conviction and punish the prosecutors. Maybe if some prosecutors go to jail this kind of abuse will finally stop.

Here’s the story of his criminal case from Wiki:

In March 2017, Stockman was arrested for allegedly conspiring to use contributions designated for a charity to fund his campaign and for personal use, a felony, under 18 U.S.C. § 371.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in January 2013, Stockman requested and received $350,000 in donations from an unidentified businessman. Stockman allegedly solicited the money by using the name of Life Without Limits, a Las Vegas-based nonprofit intended to help people who have experienced traumatic events. The donation was allegedly intended to be used to renovate the Freedom House in Washington D.C.[62]

Stockman was also charged with conspiracy to falsify statements when reporting contributions to try launder the money.[63][64]

The FBI alleged that at the time of the events in question, Stockman had no formal control of the Life Without Limits organization, but that he had opened multiple bank accounts under the name “Stephen E Stockman dba Life Without Limits.” The FBI also alleged that financial records indicate that Stockman “made no significant expenditures toward the purchase, renovation, or operation of the ‘Freedom House,’ which was never opened.”[65]

Stockman conspired with Thomas Dodd, a former campaign worker and congressional special assistant. According to the Houston Chronicle, the alleged conspiracy involved attempts “to bilk conservative foundations out of at least $775,000 in donations meant for charitable purposes or voter education”. Dodd was indicted by a Federal grand jury in Houston and, on March 20, 2017, he pleaded guilty.[66][67] Dodd was sentenced to 18 months and ordered to pay a fine of $800,000.[68]

Stockman staffer Jason Posey entered a guilty plea before Chief U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal to counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering. He faced a prison term of up to 45 years and a fine of more than $4.8 million, plus hundreds of thousands more in restitution. Posey admitted that at Stockman’s direction he and Dodd illegally funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars from charitable foundations and individuals in charge of the foundations to pay for Stockman’s campaigns and personal expenses. On April 2, 2019, Posey was sentenced to 18 months and ordered to pay a fine of $720,000.[68]

On March 28, 2017, a federal grand jury issued a 28 count indictment that included 24 counts against Stockman. He was accused of obtaining $1.25 million under false pretenses and using the funds for his political campaigns.[69] He was charged with eleven counts of money laundering, eight counts of mail and wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to make “conduit contributions” and false statements (conspiracy to conceal the real source of the contributions by false attribution), two counts of making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, one count of making excessive contributions, and one count of willfully filing a false 2013 Federal income tax return by not reporting some of his income. Posey was charged with money laundering, mail and wire fraud, conspiracy to make conduit contributions and false statements, making false statements to the Federal Election Commission, making excessive contributions, and falsification of records.[70][71] Due to its complexity and the need for time to review 142,378 pages of documents disclosed by the prosecution, a motion for postponement of Stockman’s trial by his court-appointed attorney was granted. His trial began on January 29, 2018.[72][73]

On April 12, 2018, Stockman was convicted by a jury on 23 of the 24 felony counts against him, for which he faced up to 20 years in prison for each count. He was acquitted on one count of wire fraud. Because he was judged to be a flight risk, he was remanded into custody pending sentencing,[74][75] which was re-set for November 7, 2018.

On November 7, 2018 he was sentenced to serve ten years in prison and ordered to pay $1,014,718.51 in restitution, to be followed by three years of supervised release.[76] Stockman is incarcerated at a medical facility of the Federal Bureau of Prisons at Fort Worth, Texas.[77]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Stockman#Criminal_case

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