Grant Rodgers

grodgers@dmreg.com

Federal prosecutors launched their second bid on Tuesday to win convictions against three former Ron Paul presidential campaign staffers accused of a plot to illegally funnel thousands of dollars to a former Iowa state senator for his endorsement.

But defense attorneys for the three operatives argued to jurors that no laws were broken, though none denied that Paul's 2012 campaign paid $73,000 to then-Sen. Kent Sorenson. Two lawyers said their clients didn't know the details of payments to the lawmaker, while one portrayed the money as regular business in politics — even if distasteful to voters.

Jury selection and opening arguments in the trial were the newest developments in a public corruption case that's wound on since Sorenson publicly endorsed the Libertarian-leaning Texas congressman at a rally on Dec. 28, 2011, days ahead of the Iowa Republican caucus. Sorenson had previously served as the Iowa chairman for former U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, who accused the lawmaker of accepting money from the Paul camp immediately after his defection.

Timeline of the Ron Paul campaign payoff scandal

Bachmann's public allegations of wrongdoing forced the three Paul operatives, campaign chairman Jesse Benton, campaign manager John Tate and deputy campaign manager Dimitri Kesari, to come up with a scheme that would keep payments to Sorenson out of public campaign expenditure reports, U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor Richard Pilger told jurors in his opening. Ultimately, the money was filtered to Sorenson through a third-party video and audio production company that then received and paid invoices from the lawmaker's own consulting firm, Grassroots Strategies.

"Their desire to win was about them and their success and their reputations," he said. "They cared more about winning and their political success than anything else." Pilger said emails will show all three men knew about the cover-up, which was essential to protecting their own reputations. They hoped Sorenson's influence would help ensure a caucus victory, and "went behind Paul's back" to arrange the deal, he said.

The trial is a rare second try for the federal government to convict the operatives after an earlier prosecution last year ended with mixed results. A grand jury indicted the three operatives on several charges that were first announced on Aug. 5, including conspiracy, causing false records, causing false campaign expenditure reports and false statements scheme.

But U.S. District Judge John Jarvey dismissed the charges entirely against Tate and all but one charge against Benton ahead of a trial that began in October.

The dismissals, which left the door open for new prosecutions using different evidence, came after Jarvey found prosecutors wrongly used evidence gathered in FBI interviews with Benton and Tate to secure indictments from the grand jury. Both operatives participated in the interviews after signing so-called proffer agreements that bar prosecutors from using their statements as evidence against them in a wide variety of charges, according to the Associated Press.

Benton was acquitted at the first trial of a single count of lying to FBI agents. His team of attorneys at the time portrayed him as a busy political operative who was not intimately involved in every detail of Paul's campaign. Kesari was convicted of a charge of causing false records but found not guilty of an obstruction of justice charge.

Jurors were deadlocked and couldn't reach a decision on three other charges against Kesari after defense attorney Jesse Binnall argued that Sorenson's work on the campaign was legitimate. The new indictment leading to the current trial, also being presided over by Jarvey, was filed in November.

Much of the new trial is expected to mirror what happened in October, including testimony from Sorenson — who resigned from the Iowa Senate in 2013 after an independent report scrutinized similar payments he was receiving from the Bachmann campaign. Sorenson pleaded guilty to two charges in the case in 2014, including obstruction of justice, and faces his own possible 25-year prison sentence.

Binnall, who is representing Kesari, immediately worked to discredit Sorenson in his opening statement to jurors, calling him a liar who can't be trusted. Sorenson testified at the first trial that he and Kesari had become good friends through their work in conservative political circles, and that Benton had promised to "take care of him" after he switched his support.

"Kent Sorenson is going to get on that witness stand and I wouldn't be surprised if he lies right to your faces," Binnall told jurors. "You can't send somebody away on the word of Kent Sorenson."

Binnall argued that the hidden payments to Sorenson's consulting firm were simple mistakes by a campaign employee rather than a cover-up to keep the money secret. An employee who prepared expenditure documents that were sent to the Federal Election Commission wrongly coded the payments that ultimately went to Sorenson as "audio/visual" expenses, he said.

Sorenson did legitimate work for the campaign, including recording robocalls and managing delegates for Paul at county and state conventions, Binnall said. Jurors should see that Kesari's work was not illegal, even if they do not agree with his methods of political campaigning, he said.

"He may have tactics that you don't agree with, but he was a political operative trying to do his job."

Defense attorneys representing both Benton and Tate argued that the two operatives knew little about the details of payments to Sorenson. Des Moines lawyer Angela Campbell, who is representing Benton, told jurors that Benton once pushed back on Kesari when the deputy campaign manager suggested Sorenson could go to South Carolina to help efforts there. "What would he do?" Benton asked in an email.