Brian Kelsey to appear in court May 16 for evidentiary hearing

By , Daily Memphian Published: April 25, 2023 3:39 PM CT

Former state Sen. Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) will appear in federal court in Nashville on May 16 for an evidentiary hearing in his campaign fraud case after his attempt to back out of a plea deal.

Waverly Crenshaw, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee, announced the hearing in a Tuesday, April 24, court filing after prosecutors argued his request to withdraw his guilty pleas was a “meritless” last-minute attempt to delay sentencing.

In response to prosecutors, attorney David Warrington reiterated that the death of his father and the birth of twin sons clouded Kelsey’s judgment and that the government’s legal arguments were “incoherent.”


Prosecutors call Brian Kelsey’s request to reverse guilty plea ‘meritless’


“Mr. Kelsey entered his plea agreement hastily with an unsure heart and confused mind,” Warrington wrote in an April 21 letter, reiterating the argument from the request to withdraw the guilty plea.

“Losing a parent is hard,” he wrote.

“And in the case of a year-long, slow decline of pancreatic cancer, the emotional toll on loved ones is even harder. This is the struggle that Kelsey was experiencing as he contemplated what to do with the rest of his life. Likewise, new parents develop a confused mind when they are deprived of sleep due to the constant stress of not one crying baby, but two.”

Kelsey pleaded guilty in November to conspiracy to defraud the United States and to accepting excessive campaign contributions related to his unsuccessful 2016 congressional campaign. In exchange for his guilty pleas, prosecutors agreed not to try him on three other charges.

His sentencing was originally scheduled for June, but was moved up to March; Crenshaw canceled it after Kelsey asked to withdraw his plea 11 days before he was set to be sentenced.


Brian Kelsey sentencing canceled


“Once his mind began clearing, Mr. Kelsey acted quickly to seek to withdraw his plea,” Warrington wrote. “This was no ‘tactical decision’ to delay … for he had moved up his sentencing date (from June to March).”

Warrington argued that when Kelsey pleaded guilty, he “assumed the matter could be settled with a civil payment — not a criminal conviction.”

Warrington also reiterated that Kelsey wasn’t guilty of the crimes to which he pleaded guilty because prosecutors misused the term “coordinate” in reference to how money was shifted from Kelsey’s state campaign to a national political organization to benefit Kelsey’s congressional campaign.

He wrote that prosecutors’ arguments regarding that coordination were “incoherent.”

Prosecutors disputed that Kelsey’s decision to plead guilty was rushed and uninformed. They pointed to months of negotiations with his attorneys over a plea deal.


Brian Kelsey seeks to withdraw guilty pleas in campaign fraud case


They also said Kelsey is a well-educated attorney who served for nearly two decades in the Tennessee General Assembly — including as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which handles criminal justice legislation.

They said his father’s illness and death “warrants sympathy” but that it wasn’t a good enough reason for someone so “sophisticated” to withdraw a guilty plea.

Judges use evidentiary hearings to decide whether there is enough evidence to proceed with a trial and what evidence would be presented at trial.

Topics

Brian Kelsey Tennessee State Senate federal court
Ian Round

Ian Round

Ian Round is The Daily Memphian’s state government reporter based in Nashville. He came to Tennessee from Maryland, where he reported on local politics for Baltimore Brew. He earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland in December 2019.


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