NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — President Donald Trump has pardoned a former Republican Tennessee lawmaker who was two weeks into a 21-month prison sentence for an illegal campaign finance scheme that he pleaded guilty to in 2022, before he tried unsuccessfully to take back his plea.
Former Sen. Brian Kelsey announced the pardon in a social media post Tuesday evening. He had been ordered to report to FCI Ashland's minimum security satellite camp in Kentucky on Feb. 24.
Kelsey received a “full and unconditional pardon” for his case and authorities were ordered to release him from prison immediately, according to a copy of the president’s action provided by Kelsey’s attorney.
“May God bless America, despite the prosecutorial sins it committed against me, President Trump, and others the past four years,” Kelsey said in the post.
The 47-year-old pleaded guilty in November 2022 to charges related to his attempts to funnel campaign money from his state legislative seat toward his failed 2016 congressional bid.
Kelsey was indicted in October 2021. He initially labeled the prosecution a witch hunt and blamed the Democratic administration of then-President Joe Biden. But when a co-defendant pleaded guilty the following October, Kelsey quickly did as well.
He repeated his attack on the Biden administration Tuesday, saying, “God used Donald Trump to save me from the weaponized Biden DOJ,” referring to the Department of Justice. In 2017, during Trump's first term, Kelsey's campaign finance dealings spurred a complaint by the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center with the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice.
Kelsey was unsuccessful in his March 2023 attempt to rescind his guilty plea.
Kelsey had argued he entered the plea with an “unsure heart and a confused mind.” He noted that he and his wife had twin sons born in September 2022, and his father had terminal pancreatic cancer, then died in February 2023.
Kelsey also accepted the plea deal because his then-attorneys advised that he would likely receive probation, according to a statement Wednesday from an attorney now representing Kelsey.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Nashville denied the change of plea in May 2023. He expressed disbelief that Kelsey, a Georgetown University-educated attorney and prominent former state senator, didn’t understand the gravity of pleading guilty.
Crenshaw later denied another challenge in which Kelsey accused prosecutors of violating his plea agreement. However, that September the judge also allowed Kelsey to stay out of prison until his appeal was decided. Kelsey’s challenge ultimately failed.
Last month, Crenshaw denied another motion to remain free by Kelsey, who argued he had ineffective legal counsel and that his claim of innocence is supported by recordings by two key witnesses — the co-defendant, Joshua Smith, and former GOP Rep. Jeremy Durham, who was not charged. The judge responded that Kelsey had given an “unconditional admission of guilt” under penalty of perjury.
Kelsey had another appeal pending as he received the pardon.
Smith, a Nashville social club owner, pleaded guilty to one count under a deal that required him to “cooperate fully and truthfully.” He was sentenced to five years of probation.
The indictment alleges that Kelsey, Smith and others illegally concealed the transfer of $91,000 — $66,000 from Kelsey’s state Senate campaign committee and $25,000 from a nonprofit that advocated about legal justice issues — to a national political organization to fund advertisements urging support of Kelsey’s 2016 failed congressional campaign. The scheme caused the political group to file false campaign finance reports and make illegal, excessive campaign contributions to Kelsey, the indictment says.
Although the indictment does not name the national political organization, the Campaign Legal Center's 2017 complaint said the American Conservative Union was making coordinated independent expenditures with Kelsey’s campaign. The American Conservative Union has said it has cooperated with investigators.
Saurav Ghosh, the Campaign Legal Center's director of federal campaign finance reform, said Trump’s pardon of Kelsey “demonstrates an open hostility and contempt for accountability and the rule of law.”
Kelsey, an attorney from Germantown, was first elected to the General Assembly in 2004 as a state representative. He was later elected to the Senate in 2009. He didn’t seek reelection in 2022.
Kelsey served as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees changes to civil and criminal laws, judicial proceedings and more. His law license was suspended in 2022 after his guilty plea.
Jonathan Mattise, The Associated Press
