Released two weeks into a 21-month prison sentence for a campaign finance conspiracy conviction, a former Tennessee legislator thanked God and President Trump and ripped the Biden administration. "God used Donald Trump to save me," Brian Kelsey told CNBC. "His election saved me from the Biden" Department of Justice, Kelsey said. Kelsey, a Republican, pleaded guilty in a criminal trial in 2022 to an illegal campaign finance scheme in which he tried to redirect money from his state Senate seat to his 2016 congressional bid. He later tried and failed to take back his plea, per WTVF.
Kelsey said he was confused when he entered his plea after being told by his attorneys that he'd probably just get probation. His most recent motion seeking to keep him out of prison was rejected last month in Nashville, per the AP. US District Judge Waverly Crenshaw expressed skepticism that a former legislator with a law degree from Georgetown University didn't understand the implications of pleading guilty. Kelsey's law license was suspended in 2022 after he pleaded guilty.
An inmate so early in a prison term rarely is not often granted a pardon or sentence commutation, per CNBC. Kelsey, who walked out of a federal prison camp in Ashland, Kentucky, on Tuesday, posted on X that his is a "full and unconditional pardon." Among the other convicts who have been pardoned since President Trump began his term in January is former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of corruption charges and whose sentence was commuted in Trump's first term. (More presidential pardon stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
