Tennessee Senate Expels Corrupt Democrat Convicted of Defrauding Federally Funded Nursing School

Democrat Katrina Robinson started a school for nurses and other health-care workers, got millions in federal grants for it, and was just convicted of fraud for using it as her personal piggy bank:

Robinson . . . is currently awaiting sentencing after being convicted on federal fraud charges. In July 2020, Robinson was charged with stealing more than $600,000 in federal funds received by a health care school she directed and using the money to pay for her wedding and other personal expenses. The school which Robinson directed, The Healthcare Institute, received more than $2.2 million in federal grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She was accused of misusing federal grant money over four years, using the money to pay for her wedding and other personal expenses. Robinson was acquitted on 15 of 20 charges sought by federal prosecutors. A jury convicted her of four out of five counts of wire fraud, but a judge later dismissed two more of those charges.

The website for the school, which she founded in 2015, describes itself as “the only independently owned licensed nursing school in the state of Tennessee.” Of course, this sort of federal largesse is often a tempting target for corruption. The Tennessee state senate voted 27–5 Wednesday (a party-line vote) to make her the first legislator expelled since 1866. Robinson, complaining that she still has avenues to fight the conviction, predictably retreated to calling the vote “one of the most discriminatory, misogynistic, racist, and partisan hearings against a prominent state Senator in Tennessee.”