Judge Dismisses Fraud Charges Against Andrew Gillum and Sharon Lettman-Hicks

metroweekly.com:

not guilty of a 19th charge of providing false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.Those statements were made in an interview concerning a 2016 trip — paid for by undercover agents posing as real estate developers — that Gillum had taken with his brother to New York, which included a boat tour and tickets to the hit Broadway show Hamilton.Gillum subsequently paid a $5,000 fine to the state ethics commission to settle allegations surrounding that New York trip and an unrelated trip to Costa Rica.Florida law requires that all gifts valued at $100 or more, and any gifts from lobbyists, be disclosed on campaign finance reports.The jury deadlocked on the remaining 18 charges, prompting Winsor to declare a mistrial and cancel a case teleconference meeting scheduled for Wednesday, reports Tallahassee ABC affiliate WTXL.According to the Tallahassee Democrat, 10 of the 12 jurors overwhelmingly favored acquitting Gillum and Lettman-Hicks.

Several jurors later anonymously alleged that the two holdouts who refused to acquit Gillum and Lettman-Hicks were overly “biased” and called the government’s case “beyond flimsy.”Although prosecutors initially signaled their intent to retry the defendants on the conspiracy and fraud charges, they later asked Winsor to dismiss the indictment, seeming to have concluded that obtaining a conviction would be difficult, particularly in light of the jury’s overwhelming predisposition to vote for acquittal.The failure to obtain convictions marks a major defeat for the government as part of its Operation Capital Currency investigation, in which undercover FBI agents posed as crooked developers as part of a two-year sting looking into whether city officials were engaged in various.