An appeals court on Tuesday tossed former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s 2022 conviction for lying to federal investigators about illegal campaign donations, determining the Nebraska Republican should never have been put on trial in Los Angeles.
“The Constitution plainly requires that a criminal defendant be tried in the place where the criminal conduct occurred,” reads the opinion by Judge James Donato, who ordered a new trial for the former congressman. “Consequently, we reverse Fortenberry’s conviction without prejudice to retrial in a proper venue.”
Fortenberry was accused of lying to federal agents in two separate interviews in 2019—one at his home in Lincoln, Nebraska, and another at his lawyer’s office in Washington, D.C. But he was ultimately tried in Los Angeles, where the illegal donation scheme allegedly took place.
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Prosecutors said Fortenberry lied to the feds when he claimed in the interviews that he didn’t know that a Nigerian billionaire had illegally donated $30,200 to his campaign during a Los Angeles fundraiser using three straw donors.
He was ultimately convicted in March 2022 on one count of scheming to falsify and conceal material facts and two counts of making false statements. Fortenberry, who’s maintained he was simply “confused” during the FBI interviews, was sentenced to two years probation and resigned soon after.
In his resignation letter, Fortenberry cited the poem, “Do It Anyway,” which includes the line: “What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight. Build anyway.”
