A.G. Gancarski
State Rep. Reggie Fullwood filed a motion recently saying he could not be charged with defrauding the Division of Elections in his 14-count federal trial for 10 counts of wire fraud and four counts of failure to file federal tax returns.
This week, federal prosecutors disagreed.
“Defendant’s motion is misguided. It is premature, it is an incorrect statement of law, and it incorrectly conflates the “honest services” fraud standards with the more routine wire fraud standards. Accordingly, the United States respectfully requests this Court to deny Defendant’s motion,” claimed the prosecution.
The feds say evidentiary rulings must be preserved until trial, according to case law and precedent, to consider “foundation, relevancy, and context.”
If the court honored Fullwood’s ruling, argue the federal prosecutors, the court would be “making evidentiary decisions without a full picture” of the prosecution’s case.
The prosecution also takes issue with Fullwood’s interpretation of wire fraud statutes, saying the statute requires no identification of the “panoply of possible victims.”
As well, claims the prosecution, the “inclusion of the State of Florida” as a defrauded party is “appropriate” because “the government does not have to prove that the fraud involves deception of the same person or entity whose money or property is the intended object of the scheme.”
“There may be several persons or entities … who were tricked, deceived, or defrauded,” claims the prosecutorial motion.
“This is, instead, a case of an individual who defrauded both the State of Florida and his campaign contributors by lying to both. In the process, both the State of Florida and the campaign contributors were victims. The Government should be permitted to argue as much,” claims the prosecution.
The trial, as of now, is set for sometime in August.
