Grant Rodgers

grodgers@dmreg.com

The "architect" of a plot by Ron Paul campaign operatives to secretly pay for an endorsement ahead of the 2012 Iowa Caucus was sentenced Wednesday to serve three months in federal prison.

Dimitri Kesari, the deputy manager of Paul's presidential campaign, was one of three aides convicted in May of charges stemming from $73,000 in payments made to a state senator.

U.S. District Judge John Jarvey said evidence showed Kesari worked the hardest to organize the payments and then conceal them from journalists and voters. "You are the one that made it work," the judge said before sentencing Kesari to prison.

The former campaign worker also will spend three months on house arrest and pay a $10,000 fine.

Kesari's sentence was the harshest Jarvey has given in the scandal that prompted two criminal trials and tanked the political career of former Republican state Sen. Kent Sorenson. Former Paul campaign chairman Jesse Benton and manager John Tate were each sentenced to two years of probation Tuesday, along with six months of house arrest and a fine.

The judge denied Kesari's request to stay out of prison on an appeal bond while the jury verdict is reviewed by a higher court. It's unknown exactly when Kesari might begin serving the prison sentence. He will surrender himself to federal authorities at a later date. Defense attorney Jesse Binnall said he intends to appeal the bond denial.

Kesari left the federal courthouse in Des Moines after the hearing surrounded by his wife and children. He asked Jarvey to consider the effects of the case on his family before sending him to prison. His children in particular have been "humiliated" by the scandal, he said during the hearing.

"I screwed up; I made a bad mistake," he said. "I'll be paying for it probably for the rest of my life."

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The payments themselves were not necessarily illegal, but the operatives chose to keep Sorenson's name out of public campaign expenditure filings by paying him through a third-party video production company, prosecutors alleged at trial.The ruse was necessary because Sorenson faced immediate accusations that he had been bought by the Paul campaign, prosecutors claimed.

Until the shocking switch, the conservative state senator had served as the state chairman of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann's campaign.

Kesari was ultimately convicted of conspiracy, causing false campaign records, false statements and causing false records.

During the sentencing hearing, prosecutor Richard Pilger said Kesari was the person most involved in wooing Sorenson to the Paul campaign. Kesari was the "triggerman" who put the whole plot in action, he said.

The Rev. George Alexson, who leads a Greek Orthodox parish in Virginia that Kesari helped found, testified at the hearing on behalf of the political operative. Alexson spoke about the care Kesari gave to his ailing mother before her death and his generosity toward the church.

But during a cross-examination, Pilger asked the priest whether he was aware of all the facts of the case. The prosecutor asked Alexson whether he knew that Kesari had once impersonated a priest in an email in an effort to lure a couple away from their home so that he could break in and steal a computer.

Pilger did not spell out any additional facts and declined to speak with journalists after the hearing. However, Kesari is reportedly a suspect in a July 2014 burglary in Rhode Island. The home that was burglarized in that case was owned by a couple whose late son worked on the Paul campaign.

A laptop computer was stolen during the break-in, which happened after an anonymous person paid for the couple to take a vacation to Maine, according to a Providence Journal report. There have been no charges in the burglary, but a police chief told the Rhode Island newspaper that there was "lots of evidence" and that his department was working with federal investigators.

Binnall said it was inappropriate for the prosecutor to speak about alleged crimes. The priest simply replied that "if he was guilty, I suppose I would expect him to repent of it."

"We all sin and we are all in need of restoration," Alexson said. "I think basically he is a good, decent human being."

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said "underlying information" about the burglary remains under seal and that prosecutors would have no further comment.

Carr said the government has no plans to appeal the sentences given to any of the three campaign aides, even though prosecutors had urged prison sentences for all three.