Nebraska congressman Jeff Fortenberry convicted of lying to the FBI
A Nebraska congressman was convicted Thursday of lying to federal investigators.
Rep. Jeff Fortenberry told the FBI that he never received any money from foreign sources. In reality, he took $30,000 funneled from a Nigerian billionaire, Gilbert Chagoury.
Fortenberry’s defense team argued that the FBI targeted their client and that he simply forgot a phone call.
A nine-term Republican in Nebraska’s 1st District, which includes Lincoln and the Omaha suburbs, Fortenberry will be sentenced June 28.
The feds said in 2016 Fortenberry knowingly took the $30,000 from Dr. Elias Ayoub, who had originally received the relatively small donation from Chagoury and passed it along to Forternberry.
Chagoury was hoping for Fortenberry’s continued support of In Defense of Christians, a nonprofit organization supporting Christians in the Middle East that Fortenberry had donated to in the past.
In 2019, Fortenberry told the FBI that he’d never received any international donations. But Ayoub was cooperating with the feds and had recorded a 2018 phone call with Fortenberry where he explicitly said the money came from foreign sources.
Fortenberry’s defense said he didn’t remember the phone call when he was talking to the feds. But the jury didn’t buy it and deliberated for less than two hours before convicting Fortenberry. The congressman promised to appeal.
With News Wire Services
