On the Line (2022)

A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of a Republican operative who had been pardoned by Donald Trump in the waning days of his presidency.

The District of Columbia Circuit Court rejected an appeal by Jesse Benton, a former senior aide to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul, of his November 2022 conviction for orchestrating a scheme to conceal a $100,000 donation from a Russian national to his GOP consulting firm — and pocketing most of it.

Russian businessman Roman Vasilenko wired the money under his own name to the consulting firm, but Benton kept $75,000 for himself and gave $25,000 under his name to the presidential campaign for Trump, who posed for a photo with Vasilenko. Benton then filed a false report with the Federal Election Commission to conceal the source of the funds, the court found.

The Trump campaign was not aware of the true source of that donation.

Benton had appealed the conviction, saying Trump's 2020 pardon should have prevented the jury from hearing about his previous election crimes before convicting him of the newer charges.

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However, prosecutors argued that the unusual manner in which Trump handed out pardons by sidestepping the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney should have allowed them to present evidence of Benton's previous conviction for bribing an Iowa politician to switch his endorsement in 2011 to Ron Paul's long-shot presidential campaign.

The 45-year-old Benton, who is married to Ron Paul's granddaughter, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for that straw donor scheme.

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