GOP’s Fortenberry Targeted In Yet Another Questionable And Politicized Case From Troubled Department Of Justice
No major reforms have taken place at the Department of Justice or FBI even as its politicized bungling of prosecutions and investigations has made major news.
By Mollie Hemingway
December 7, 2021
Jeff Fortenberry is not the person you’d expect to be charged with any crime, much less the crime of lying to the FBI. Painfully earnest, the Nebraska Republican congressman is a devout Roman Catholic who has a perfect pro-life voting record. He served on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, and has developed a reputation for activism on behalf of persecuted religious minorities in Iraq. It was that last focus that ended up getting him in the crosshairs of the Department of Justice.
Not even the FBI is accusing Fortenberry of knowingly accepting illegal contributions from a Nigerian billionaire who shared his concern about religious persecution in the Middle East, but those illegal contributions were where things started.
In 2016, a group of Lebanese Americans held a series of events in Los Angeles for Fortenberry, including a fundraiser. At one event, he was inducted into the Order of St. Gregory, which is a knighthood established by Pope Gregory XVI in 1831, for his service to persecuted Christians in the Middle East. Unbeknownst to the congressman, some attendees had been given money through a conduit to give him.
In 2018, the FBI ordered an informant to briefly call Fortenberry to tell him the contributions were probably illegal. A year later, two men claiming to be FBI agents knocked on his door in Nebraska and asked to speak to him. Fortenberry and his wife Celeste invited them into the house, although, according to an email they sent supporters, they were so suspicious about the men’s changing story about the nature of their visit that they asked local police to come over as well.
Referencing the obscene signs, nasty political messages, and emailed threats of violence that Fortenberry had received, Celeste said, “I had no way of knowing if these men were who they said they were.”
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https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/07/gops-fortenberry-targeted-in-yet-another-questionable-and-politicized-case-from-troubled-department-of-justice/
