(CN) — The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday asked a federal judge to throw out the indictment of former U.S. Congressman Jeffrey Fortenberry for lying to the FBI during an investigation of illegal campaign donations by a Parisian billionaire.
Prosecutors filed an unopposed request to dismiss the indictment in federal court in the District of Columbia, where the charges were filed anew after the Ninth Circuit of Appeals overturned Fortenberry’s conviction by a Los Angeles jury.
President Donald Trump welcomed the news in a post on Truth Social, saying it was great to see that the Justice Department had ended the “witch hunt” against the former lawmaker.
“Jeff and his family were forced to suffer greatly due to the illegal Weaponization of our Justice System by the Radical Left Democrats,” Trump said. “I am very proud of our Department of Justice, something I have not been able to say for many years!”
Fortenberry, 64, was found guilty in 2022 of concealing a $30,000 illegal campaign contribution from Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian-born, Paris-based billionaire with whom he shared a passion for the plight of Christian minorities in the Middle East, and lying to the FBI when they questioned him about the donation.
He was sentenced to two years’ probation after the judge found his crimes to be “out of character” for the longtime politician and didn’t require prison time.
In a unanimous decision in late 2023, a Ninth Circuit panel ruled that the veteran politician, who served nine terms in the House of Representatives until he resigned in 2022, shouldn’t have been put on trial in Los Angeles for false statements he made to federal agents in his home state and Washington D.C.
Although the illegal campaign contribution occurred at a 2016 fundraiser in LA, the charges only pertained to statements Fortenberry made some three years later, after the organizer of the fundraiser started cooperating with the FBI investigation into Chagoury, who illegally contributed to various campaigns.
The informant alerted Fortenberry in a 2018 phone call recorded by the FBI that the money he raised in LA had in fact come from Chagoury — who, as a foreign national, couldn’t contribute to federal campaigns — and was given to the congressman through “straw men” at the event.
In two subsequent interviews with the FBI in Nebraska and Washington, Fortenberry said he didn’t know the money had come from an illegal source.
Federal prosecutors last year filed a new indictment in Washington.
An attorney representing Fortenberry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the government’s request to dismiss the indictment.