On Tuesday, Jeffrey Fortenberry, a former U.S. Representative from Nebraska, won an appeal to overturn his criminal conviction.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Mr. Fortenberry should not have been tried in Los Angeles, where the Republican’s campaign allegedly received $30,000 from Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury, just because federal agents who later interviewed him about the money worked there.
Writing for a three-judge panel, Judge James Donato said the U.S. Department of Justice could seek a new trial in Nebraska or the District of Columbia, where Mr. Fortenberry denied knowing about illegal contributions.
“Mr. Fortenberry’s trial took place in a state where no charged crime was committed, and before a jury drawn from the vicinage of the federal agencies that investigated the defendant,” Judge Donato wrote in the ruling. “The Constitution does not permit this. Fortenberry’s convictions are reversed so that he may be retried, if at all, in a proper venue.”…
