March 12 (UPI) — Former Republican Tennessee state Sen. Brian Kelsey, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate campaign finance law, was pardoned by President Donald Trump Tuesday, just two weeks into a 21-month prison sentence.
Kelsey claimed God used Trump to save him from serving the time after he pled guilty to doing the crime.
On X, Kelsey wrote, “God used Donald Trump to save me from the weaponized Biden DOJ. This afternoon, I received a full and unconditional pardon form (sic) an act that even my chief accuser admitted I didn’t commit.”
Kelsey claimed the Biden administration had committed “prosecutorial sins” against him despite pleading guilty to his crime.
According to Department of Justice and court records, Kelsey pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws and “conspiring to defraud the Federal Election Commission as part of a scheme to benefit his 2016 campaign for U.S. Congress.”
What Kelsey did and pleaded guilty in court to doing was to “secretly and unlawfully funnel money from multiple sources, including his own Tennessee State Senate campaign committee, to his authorized federal campaign committee,” according to the DOJ.
Kelsey also secretly and illegally coordinated with a national political organization on campaign advertising and falsified Federal Election Committee records to hide the illegal transfer of $91,000 in campaign contributions.
In 2023, Kelsey tried to avoid prison by withdrawing his guilty plea, claiming he was confused and inexperienced with the justice system.
But a federal judge denied his motion to stay out of prison and the court said it didn’t believe Kelsey didn’t understand the law because he is a Georgetown-educated lawyer as well as a former senator.
Since regaining office in January, Trump has pardoned more than 1,500 Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol in an effort to block the legal transfer of presidential power to 2020.
Other Trump second-term pardons include ones for Ross Ulbricht, founder of the dark web Silk Road illicit drug marketplace, and former Illinois Gov. Rob Blagojevich, who was convicted on corruption charges.
Trump’s pardons also include ones for two former police officers sentenced in connection with the death a Black man in 2020 and the subsequent attempt to cover up the crime.
