Nebraska Rep. Jeff Fortenberry is found guilty of lying to FBI about illegal foreign donation

Nebraska representative convicted on one count of concealment of conduit contributions and two counts of lying to the FBI

File. (Associated Press)

US Representative Jeff Fortenberry has been found guilty of lying to federal investigators about an illegal 2016 contribution to his election campaign from a foreign national.

The Nebraska Republican was convicted on Thursday of one count of falsifying and concealing material facts and two counts of making false statements.

Fortenberry had not disclosed the identity of the contributor — Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury — in his campaign filings.

The congressman faces up to five years in prison on each count, though supervised release is also a possibility. His sentencing is scheduled for 28 June.

The federal jury in Los Angeles took less than two hours before finding Fortenberry guilty. The jury heard closing arguments on Thursday in which prosecutors presented a slide show of all the illegal flow of foreign money into Fortenberry’s campaign.

The prosecutors said the money came for the congressman’s support of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East.

It was revealed in court that Mr Chagoury gave a bag of $30,000 cash to one Toufic Baaklini — who then passed it on to a Los Angeles doctor named Eli Ayoub. Mr Ayoub then gave the money to his relatives in LA so they could write cheques to Fortenberry at an LA fundraiser in 2016.

Susan Har, an assistant US attorney and one of the prosecutors in the case, told jurors to dismiss the defence’s suggestion that FBI agents had ambushed Fortenberry.

She said: “The question is not, ‘How could they look into the defendant?’ The question is, ‘How could they not?’”

The Republican congressman’s defence had questioned the prosecution and asked them how they can base an entire case on a 10-minute phone call from Mr Ayoub to Fortenberry.

On 4 June 2018, the FBI had recorded a call between Mr Ayoub and Fortenberry in which the former was found telling the Republican thrice that Mr Baaklini provided $30,000 in cash and that the cash “probably came from Chagoury”.

All three men in the plan to funnel illegal foreign money to the 61-year-old Republican are of Lebanese descent and had ties with “In Defense of Christians” — a nonprofit that claims to fight religious persecution in the Middle East and that Fortenberry supported.

On Thursday, Ms Har and prosecutor Mack Jenkins, the lead attorney for the government, said that there was “ample evidence” that Fortenberry heard Mr Ayoub’s words and was concerned.

In the US, politicians can’t take money from foreign donors. Ms Har said: “It’s essentially campaign finance 101.”

Mr Jenkins added: “At the end of the day, it’s a pretty simple case. It’s an all-too-familiar story of a politician caught up in the system, caught up in the cycle of power, who lost his way.”