A federal court in Florida disagreed with Andrew Gillum’s claims that he was the target of selective prosecution because he was a Black candidate for governor and declined to toss out the criminal charges against him.
Earlier last year, federal allegations against Gillum and a coworker included conspiracy, wire fraud, and making false statements to FBI agents. According to the prosecution, Gillum used third parties to reroute funds back to himself for personal benefit.
Gillum met with undercover FBI agents acting as developers while he was the mayor of Tallahassee and throughout his campaign for governor, according to the prosecution. According to the indictment, his colleagues requested payments from the agents and recommended strategies for giving money without designating them as political contributions, like as paying for a fundraiser dinner.
Gillum has entered a not guilty plea and disputed the accusations, claiming they were made for political reasons.
U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor this week denied four requests by the defendants opposing the continuance of the prosecution, claiming that their arguments were “meritless.”
Because the charges were delayed in being filed and because he was being pursued due to his ethnicity and politics, Gillum had requested that they be dropped. The judge, who was chosen by the late President Donald Trump, stated that Gillum had not provided any evidence to back up the assertion that he had been singled out for prosecution due to his race or politics.
Black candidate for governor in 2018, Gillum narrowly lost the election to Ron DeSantis of the Republican Party. Even after losing, CNN recruited Gillum as an analyst because he was still regarded as a rising star in the Democratic Party.
Then, in March 2020, Gillum was discovered asleep and inebriated in a hotel room with two other guys, one of whom is an escort. He checked into a recovery facility two days later, and he later revealed his bisexuality in an interview with a television network.
