Andrew Gillum, who ran for governor of Florida in 2018, has been indicted on 21 counts:
Andrew Gillum, a once-rising Democratic star who nearly won a 2018 race for Florida governor, was indicted on Wednesday along with a close political ally on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and making false statements.
According to a news release from the United States attorney for the Northern District of Florida, Gillum and a longtime associate, Sharon Janet Lettman-Hicks, are accused of making “false and fraudulent promises and representations” related to money that they had received from 2016 to 2019. The money was diverted to a company owned by Lettman-Hicks and then funneled to Gillum for personal use, the US attorney’s office said.
Gillum and Lettman-Hicks face 21 charges, according to the news release. Gillum, a former CNN political commentator, is scheduled for an initial appearance at 2 p.m. ET Wednesday at the United States courthouse in Tallahassee, where he resides.
In return, Gillum has said:
In a statement released before the government announced the charges, Gillum declared his innocence and suggested the case against him was political.
“I have spent the last 20 years of my life in public service and continue to fight for the people,” Gillum said in the statement. “Every campaign I’ve run has been done with integrity. Make no mistake that this case is not legal, it is political. Throughout my career I have always stood up for the people of Florida and have spoken truth to power.”
Look: as all NR’s readers and podcast listeners know by now, I am a self-professed “criminal justice squish,” and I am entirely open to the idea that Gillum is innocent — which, of course, he must be presumed to be until a jury decides otherwise. Prosecutors often gets things wrong, or overcharge, or bring cases that aren’t good enough to satisfy our constitutional and statutory rules. Maybe Gillum will walk away free, and maybe he’ll deserve to. I don’t know.
But the idea that the case against him is “political”? That seems silly on its face. Gillum, you will note, is not being prosecuted by the State of Florida, but by the federal government. So where’s the motive? Gillum mentions his “campaigns.” But he’s a Democrat, like the president, and his most recent opponent was Ron DeSantis, whom the president loathes. In 2018, Joe Biden not only endorsed Gillum, he stumped for him, too.
As for Gillum’s “career”? Again: He’s a lifelong Democrat, whose last political act was to help “mobilize 50,000 voters” for Biden during the 2020 presidential election. What, exactly, is the executive branch supposed to get out of persecuting him? Clearly, if the federal government thought that the investigation into Gillum was some Trump-era holdover, it wouldn’t have charged him.
Is that federal government wrong in its assessment of Gillum’s conduct? Maybe. We’ll find out. Is it “political”? That seems extremely, extremely unlikely to me.