Stockard on the Stump: Shelby senator helps Kelsey with amendment to pay legal fees

Yahoo

11-04-2025

Sen. Brent Taylor is aiding his predecessor in adjusting Tennessee's campaign finance laws. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
Former state Sen. Brian Kelsey is gaining some help from his successor in a quest to use state campaign funds to pay his legal fees after being pardoned for breaking federal campaign laws.
Republican Sen. Brent Taylor of Shelby County told the Lookout Thursday that he drafted an amendment for Kelsey but that the former Germantown lawmaker would have to get a bill sponsor to attach it because he didn't want to carry it through the legislature.
Taylor, who replaced Kelsey, said he did it as a 'courtesy to a former senator' so he could 'sell it to other people.' The amendment would go on Senate bill 229, according to Taylor.
Sen. Richard Briggs, a Knoxville Republican, is sponsoring that bill with Republican Rep. Tim Hicks of Washington County. SB229, a Registry of Election Finance bill, was recommended to the Senate finance committee way back in February, if anyone can remember. It uses part of the professional privilege tax paid by lobbyists to fund a Registry reporting system change.
Briggs said Kelsey called him twice about the matter, but he said he hadn't thought about the bill in two months.
The Hicks bill is to go before the House finance subcommittee Monday. Hicks, who also has been contacted by Kelsey, could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Democratic Rep. Caleb Hemmer of Nashville is co-sponsoring the bill to add a provision stemming from the Ethics Commission's decision requiring the governor to reimburse a group that paid for his travel to speak at a Florida event. He encourages lawmakers to take out liability insurance because of the potential for lawsuits after Republican Michelle Foreman sued him three years ago.
Hemmer said he could understand being allowed to use campaign funds for legal fees related to the legislature but not for federal criminal charges.
Briggs has another campaign finance bill he's carrying with Republican Rep. Tim Rudd of Murfreesboro that's to be heard by the Government Operations Committee Monday after the House suspended the rules Thursday to consider it. Rudd said Thursday via text he plans no amendment.
Taylor said the amendment adds language saying people who've been acquitted, had charges dropped or been pardoned could pay legal fees with state campaign funds.
The Registry of Election Finance told Kelsey he couldn't use his state account to pay attorneys in the federal case. He had $197,519 in his state account before transferring it to his Red State Political Action Committee in June 2023. The PAC has more than $180,300, according to the latest filing with the state.
Kelsey hired at least six lawyers after being indicted for violating federal campaign finance law by funneling more than $80,000 through two political action committees to the American Conservative Union, which paid for ads in his failed 2016 congressional race. It is illegal to use state campaign money to pay for a federal campaign because the funds are raised under different rules.
Kelsey pleaded guilty in 2022, then embarked on a three-year tour to get out of it. He was turned down by the courts at every level, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Ex-Sen. Brian Kelsey pleads guilty to two counts of federal campaign finance violations
Lawmakers such as House Republican Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison defended Kelsey recently, saying Congress disallowed state funds for federal campaigns to eliminate competition.
Thanks to President Donald Trump, he served only two weeks of a 21-month sentence, likely after someone called in a favor.
Now, he's asking for another favor.
Said Taylor, though, 'In the abstract, if you take Kelsey out of it, and you're just looking at it objectively, I don't know that there's an issue. But what complicates this for me … you've got a person that fits the description that you're looking to amend the law to benefit, and the optics of it are not good when you can see a direct beneficiary.'
Sen. Bo Watson defended his bill to restrict immigrant education Thursday by throwing out the cost of $35 million to teach students whose second language is English.
Yet while he claimed to be defending fiscal responsibility in Tennessee, he provided no revenue figures from those darned, inescapable sales taxes and property taxes, both of which immigrant residents pay, regardless of legal documentation. As chairman of the Senate finance committee, Watson is typically measured in his approach, and in this vein he continued to paint the question as one designed to deal with financial burden, not social import.
Yet the Hixson/Chattanooga Republican (inadvertently?) omitted the critical part of the financial equation, leaving some to question his credibility.
Watson, who has been challenged by ministers and Chattanooga businesses, also failed to point out that the Hamilton County Principals Association 'strongly opposes' passage of Senate Bill 836, which escaped the full Senate on a 19-13 vote with the rarity of six Republicans opposing.
Hamilton County principals oppose bill to require immigration status checks on schoolchildren
'As leaders of public schools across Hamilton County, we stand firmly in the belief that every child and every community must be served,' says a release from the group headed by Greg Wilkey, principal of East Side Elementary School.
The letter goes on to say that efforts to exclude children from school based on their immigration status undermine principals' mission of 'creating safe, welcoming, and inclusive environments where all students can thrive.' (Here's a tip for the uninitiated: Don't use the word 'inclusive.' President Donald Trump and his minions hate it.)
Not that these folks don't count, but they might as well have been talking to the wind, even if Republican Sen. Todd Gardenhire of Chattanooga disagreed with his buddy and voted against the bill.
The Senate's Democrats balked at the bill, as expected, citing Bible verses to make the point that the 'least of those' among us deserve respect.
But lawmakers who would have us believe everything they do comes straight from God showed their true colors throughout the week, including Republican Rep. Monty Fritts of Kingston who said there is 'no greater act of rebellion in these United States than illegally coming across that border.'
Wrong again, Mr. Chemtrail.
Rep. Monty Fritts, a Kingston Republican, said there is 'no greater act of rebellion in these United States than illegally coming across that border,' but storming the U.S. Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power is right up there.
Sitting around smoking meth all day and living off the government is worse than getting up every morning and doing jobs that are hard as hell. Fritts sponsored the infamous 'chemtrail' bill that prohibits the release of chemicals into the air, largely believed to target those streaks across the sky made by jet planes. (Incidentally, a separate 'kill my chemtrail' bill failed in a Senate committee a couple of weeks ago. Evidently, they couldn't figure out whom to charge with a crime.)
It must also be noted that 'rebellion' includes acts such as storming the U.S. Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power, not sneaking into the country to climb around on roofs or cook so you don't have to. Of course, you can earn a pardon for insurrection if the president likes you.
Where this winds up is hard to tell.
Watson's bill differs from the House version in that it requires school districts to check students' immigration status before possibly charging tuition. The House bill, which hasn't gone to the floor for a final vote, gives school districts the option to check students' documents.
If the two measures don't match, they could wind up going through (conference committee) negotiations and then pass or fail on a final vote. Failure would mean the state can't challenge the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe, which would be a great disappointment to Watson and Co.
Once bound for House and Senate talks, a much ballyhooed hemp bill ran into an amendment Thursday expected to make versions from each chamber match.
The House gathered more than 50 votes to prohibit products with the hemp-derivative THCA from being sold in Tennessee stores, even though it meets guidelines lawmakers passed.
Hemp industry fears slate of restrictive bills could gut industry
The Senate bill also contains the THCA ban, likely enabling the two measures to avoid negotiations as the 2025 session hurtles toward an end in less than two weeks.
Republican Reps. Kevin Vaughan of Collierville and Ryan Williams argued in favor of leaving the THCA alone, along with Faison, who said removing it would affect only natural hemp products.
Vaughan acknowledged the hemp market has been the 'wild west' but said Wyatt Earp and his buddies will be riding herd on it soon enough when the Alcoholic Beverage Commission starts policing an industry being pulled from convenience and grocery stores and turned over to liquor and vape shops.
House Majority Leader William Lamberth of Portland and Republican lawmakers such as Rep. Sabi Kumar of Springfield supported the amendment to ban THCA, saying once people light the stuff it turns into marijuana.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons of Nashville chastised the chamber for backing a move to penalize hemp farmers and killing the 'flour' part of hemp that goes into products, leaving only those tasty synthetics.
An Innocence Project bill that died in the Senate Judiciary Committee in mid-March, then re-emerged after an amendment, cleared the full Senate Thursday, akin to an inmate who turns up exonerating evidence.
In fact, the bill creates a process for district attorneys general to petition judges to take a new look at post-conviction relief cases. The District Attorneys Conference opposed the bill initially.
But the bill's sponsor, Gardenhire, wrangled it out of the depths of his own committee and pushed it to passage with only a handful of Republicans opposing it on the floor. By God, we wouldn't want to set up a method for innocent people to be freed.
The bill's House sponsor, Democratic state Rep. Bob Freeman of Nashville, did considerably better, winning passage 85-7 last week.
'It just creates a better, more efficient process to litigate innocence cases,' said Jason Gishner, with the Innocence Project. He added that people on both sides of the argument admitted the law has a 'hole' that needs to be closed.
The measure would enable people who entered guilty pleas before conviction to go back into court if non-scientific evidence surfaces showing someone else committed the crime.
A man who'd been in prison for more than three decades testified before the committee about the difficulty of getting out in spite of being innocent.
Gishner said it shouldn't take 31 years of prison time to make your case.
Gov. Bill Lee issued a letter — not a veto — to lawmakers a week ago notifying them he was letting a bill dealing with emergency powers take effect without his signature.
House Bill 324 by Republican Rep. Rusty Grills of Newbern and Republican Sen. Mark Pody of Lebanon allows the governor to maintain authority during emergencies as long as it doesn't usurp the legislature's power.
'This decision reflects my deep concern about bills that adversely impact the state's ability to protect the 7 million Tennesseans we serve,' Lee said in a letter to Lt. Gov. Randy McNally.
The governor added that returning the bill minus his signature was designed to 'caution strongly against legislation' that could affect the state's response during disasters such as Hurricane Helene. The Tennessee Journal reported on the letter initially.
Lee hasn't vetoed a bill since taking office more than six years ago. The only veto in recent memory came from former Gov. Bill Haslam, who nixed the bill making the Bible the official book of Tennessee. The legislature failed to override, even though it takes only a constitutional majority to do so.
Pody said this week he might write the same type of letter if he were in Lee's shoes but added that each branch of government should 'zealously protect' its power.
'I'm in the legislative branch, so I want to make sure that our legislative authority is protected and nobody takes it away and nobody oversteps what they're supposed to do,' Pody said.
The bill's impetus came from the COVID pandemic and events in other states dealing with vaccinations and mandates for churches to close. Lee didn't put those on Tennesseans, and Pody and Grills said they want to make sure no future governors can.
Grills declined to criticize the governor's stance on the matter and said they had talked about the bill.
'I just believe we have constitutional rights that were given to us because we were born in America and specifically in Tennessee, and I don't believe the governor, in a state of emergency, should ever have any ability to circumvent those rights just by the stroke of a pen,' Grills said.
For the trial that everyone is wishing would start on time April 22 and end quickly, U.S. District Court Judge Eli Richardson ruled against former House Speaker Glenn Casada and his ex-chief of staff Cade Cothren and decided prosecutors don't have to identify confidential informants who wore wires.
Speculation is that several people gathered information for federal attorneys. And in a March court filing, Cothren implied that House Speaker Cameron Sexton, or someone in his office, wore a wire.
Court filing: Sexton likely wore a wire for federal investigators
Sexton, who is cooperating with the prosecution, was among 20 lawmakers who received subpoenas early this year from defense lawyers.
The case centers on kickbacks Casada and former Rep. Robin Smith allegedly received from Cothren after he created a secret political consulting business called Phoenix Solutions to get paid once Casada stepped down as speaker. Smith resigned from the legislature, took a guilty plea and is cooperating with prosecutors.
Hallway talk at Cordell Hull is that dozens of people received subpoenas, and lawmakers want to adjourn and leave Nashville so they won't be called to testify while still in session and have to face those mean-spirited folks in the media.
'Are you gonna worry for the rest of your life? / Why you in such a hurry?'*
* The Doobie Brothers, 'It Keeps You Running'
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX