Maggie's Farm

Stockman is being punished for his zealous pursuit of Obama-era wrongdoings, and in particular, for going after former Internal Revenue Service nonprofit division official Lois Lerner for targeting conservative nonprofits.

“It was a totally political attack,” said Art Harman, who was Stockman’s legislative director during his recent term in Congress.

“The prosecution was initiated two weeks after he introduced a resolution calling for the arrest of Lois Lerner,” Harman told The Epoch Times in an interview.

“Unfortunately, [former Attorney General Jeff] Sessions did not review and dismiss politically motivated prosecutions after President Trump was inaugurated,” he said.

He was ordered to serve 10 years in prison for the vague charges of mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. Whenever prosecutors want to get someone who hasn’t actually committed a crime, they use those vague but scary sounding charges. He was also ordered to pay $1,014,718.51 in restitution, to be divided between him and two other co-defendants.

What did Stockman actually do to warrant this? He facilitated four donations from two donors totaling $915,000 to two nonprofits he was associated with. One of the nonprofits spent some of the money on a campaign mailer showing the differences between Stockman and the senator he was running against. It is a (c)4 and its purpose was to educate voters. The mailer did not endorse Stockman or tell people how to vote, so it did not run afoul of campaign laws. The donors were fine with how their money was used, which was mostly for youth education.

. . . Stockman was charged with money laundering and wire fraud in part because Wells Fargo opened a new savings account for him. But this was a well-known scandal that was the fault of Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo opened up millions of fraudulent savings and checking accounts on behalf of Wells Fargo clients without their permission. They ended up paying a fine of $185 million.

The case against Stockman was so weak it took prosecutors four grand juries to finally get an indictment. It took four years to investigate what should have been a six month investigation. It cost $15-20 million to go on a fishing expedition, which included intimidating witnesses.