One Ron Paul staffer convicted, another acquitted

The high-profile trial of two former Ron Paul presidential campaign staffers accused of buying an Iowa senator's endorsement and then lying about it ended Thursday with a muddled verdict from a jury stuck at an impasse.

The jury acquitted Jesse Benton, Paul's former campaign chair, of lying to FBI agents and convicted deputy campaign manager Dimitri Kesari of a charge of causing false records.

They also acquitted him of an obstruction of justice charge. But the jury was hung on three additional charges against Kesari — conspiracy, causing false campaign expenditures and false statements scheme — holding open the possibility of a retrial. The judge gave federal prosecutors 10 days to decide whether they’ll seek to retry Kesari.

“God is great,” a jubilant Benton told reporters as he left the courthouse with his wife, Valori Pyeatt, Paul's granddaughter. “It feels good.”

Kesari said nothing to reporters as he left the courthouse, though his attorney said they would be “evaluating” options on how to move forward.

The case probably won't leave more than a slight stain on the reputation of the Iowa caucuses, said Drake University professor of political science Dennis Goldford.

“I think this is a relatively minor factor in how to consider the caucuses,” he said.

Benton and Kesari stood accused of orchestrating a plot to secretly pay former state Sen. Kent Sorenson $73,000 for his endorsement of Paul just days ahead of the 2012 Iowa Republican caucus.

Prosecutors argued that both broke the law by paying Sorenson through a video production company so that his name would be kept off public campaign expenditure reports, a calculated political move after Sorenson publicly denied being paid for his support of the campaign.

But over five days of witness testimony, Benton’s defense team portrayed Benton as a harried campaign operative who wasn’t involved in every detail of the campaign. Kesari’s lawyer argued to jurors that the pay arrangement with Sorenson wasn’t necessarily illegal, even if it was perhaps unseemly.

Roscoe Howard, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia who defended Benton, told reporters outside the courthouse “not to read too much into” underlying questions about whether the case exposed questions about campaign finance.

“The system is the system,” he said. “I don’t think that this is going to change it. It’s just a matter of the Department of Justice making sure they take a look at what’s going on and treat it for what it is and not over-treat it. That’s what we think went on here.”

It’s still possible that prosecutors could seek to bring additional charges against Benton, who was initially indicted on five charges, including conspiracy. Four charges were dismissed as part of a pretrial motion, but “we’ll see what decision they make,” Howard said.

Howard also declined to answer whether Benton himself viewed the prosecution as a political attack by the Department of Justice. Paul himself made that charge during the trial, claiming that prosecutors timed the indictment to hurt his son, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, in the first Republican presidential debate in August.

The outcome brings more uncertainty to Sorenson’s future. He pleaded guilty in August 2014, but his sentencing was delayed until after he’d testified against Kesari and Benton.

If prosecutors seek a retrial of Kesari, it’s likely a sentencing hearing would be put off again, said F. Montgomery Brown, Sorenson’s defense lawyer.

Brown declined to talk with a reporter about whether he had spoken to Sorenson about the verdict.

“I can’t comment on what his reaction to it is,” he said. “He’s just going to continue to fulfill his obligations under the plea agreement.”

On the stand during the trial, Sorenson said he regretted his time spent in Iowa politics and that he hoped to “right wrongs” by aiding the prosecution. The former state senator told jurors that he knew his arrangement with the campaign was illegal, but that he needed to be paid off the books to skirt Iowa Senate ethics rules.

But Jesse Binnall, Kesari’s attorney, portrayed Sorenson to jurors as a liar hoping to shave years off a potential prison sentence. Howard speculated outside the courthouse Thursday that the former state senator’s testimony likely did not help the government’s case as much as expected.

“Sorenson clearly has his issues,” he said.

The notes jurors sent to Chief District Judge John Jarvey indicated that deliberations had reached a deadlock by Wednesday afternoon. The jurors sent a note telling the judge a verdict had been reached on three counts, but they were stuck on three others.

“It’s too early to declare that you are hopelessly deadlocked,” Jarvey wrote back.

At trial, prosecutors introduced several email chains between Kesari, Benton and former campaign manager John Tate that showed the three had discussed wooing Sorenson from his position as former U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s Iowa campaign chair and persuading him to instead endorse Paul. Several emails from Kesari showed Benton approving invoices to pay Sorenson in the months after the endorsement.

But jurors sent another note around 11:15 a.m. Thursday that convinced Jarvey a decision on all counts would be impossible. The note was not publicly available in the court file.

“They’ve now had two nights to sleep on this, and the tenor of the note describes the seriousness and the hopelessness of reaching a verdict on the three counts,” he told lawyers before the jury was brought in to read its verdict.

The indictment and trial raised questions in national media outlets about the integrity of the Iowa caucus process. One New York Times article from August citing the case read, “Is Iowa for sale?”

Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa, agreed with Goldford that the integrity of the caucuses remains intact.

"It's easy to get caught up sometimes in the provocative nature of what bad actors do, but overall if you look at our state and our place as first in the nation and the process we use for caucuses and our elections, I'm pretty proud of this state."

The players

Jesse Benton: Benton served as the campaign chair during former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential run, and is married to a granddaughter of Paul’s. Witnesses at trial described him as a close confidante and right-hand-man to Paul, and the two regularly traveled together throughout the campaign. Benton was also the manager of U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s 2014 re-election campaign, but resigned due to fallout over the payments scandal. He’s also been a close adviser to U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, who is currently running for president.

Dimitri Kesari: Kesari was the deputy campaign manager on Paul’s 2012 campaign. Kesari is a political operative, and was also involved with the conservative National Right to Work Committee. It was in his role working for that group that he first met Kent Sorenson, and the two became allies and friends during Sorenson’s elections to the Iowa House of Representatives and later the Iowa Senate.

Kent Sorenson: Sorenson is a father of six from Milo who was elected to the Iowa House of Representatives in 2009. Then he was elected to the Iowa Senate in 2010. Ahead of the 2012 Iowa Republican caucus, Sorenson became the state chair for the presidential campaign of former U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann. On Dec. 28, 2011, he dramatically switched his support to Paul, denying allegations from the Bachmann campaign that he’d been paid. He resigned from the Senate in 2013 after an investigation showed he’d been paid by the Bachmann campaign as well, and pleaded guilty to two charges, including obstruction of justice, last year.