By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A federal judge partially overturned bribery and fraud convictions against a former top Tennessee legislator and his staffer, in a blow to federal anticorruption efforts that have come under assault by Donald Trump’s Justice Department.
Former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada and his former chief of staff Cade Cothren remain convicted on more than a dozen other criminal counts, in a case that accused them of misusing their official positions to obtain state funds for Cothren’s business.
An oral ruling on Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson of the Middle District of Tennessee, a Trump appointee, tossed two counts of bribery and one count of obtaining property through fraud against the state. A written ruling was not immediately available.
The decision amounts to another setback for the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which is down to just two attorneys from about 30, after department leadership largely dismantled it earlier this year and ordered it to stop consulting with other prosecutors on public corruption and election cases.
“We are pleased with the ruling but continue to believe the verdict was contrary to the weight of the evidence,” Casada’s attorney Edward Yarbrough said.
A Justice Department spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment.
The Casada case is one of several that has been previously scrutinized by Justice Department leadership over whether it represented what it sees as a “weaponization” against Trump’s supporters, although the investigation began during the president’s first administration.
The deputy attorney general’s office was leaning toward ordering the case dropped, but agreed to let it proceed after attorneys from the Public Integrity Section resisted, Reuters previously reported.
The Public Integrity Section was handed another defeat in July, when an appeals court vacated a conviction against Douglass Mackey, a social media influencer who used posts that resembled Hillary Clinton ads to spread false information about the 2016 presidential election.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Additional reporting by Ned Parker in New York; Editing by Andy Sullivan and Bill Berkrot)
