Among the most scandalous developments that have unfolded at Donald Trump’s unraveling Justice Department is the frequency with which federal prosecutors have investigated and indicted the president’s perceived political foes. But nearly as important as the cases the DOJ has pursued are the cases that federal prosecutors have dropped.
Take the latest developments in Tennessee, for example. WTVF, the CBS affiliate in Nashville, reported:
The U.S. Department of Justice appears to be preparing to drop a nearly two-year criminal investigation of Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles, agreeing to return or destroy evidence seized from the diehard MAGA Republican before the FBI ever got a chance to review it.
That criminal investigation had focused on potential fraud involving campaign finance reports filed by the Maury County Republican during his first run for Congress in 2022.
A press statement from the far-right congressman’s defense attorneys confirmed that the Justice Department did, in fact, agree to return the phone federal agents had seized from Ogles, as well as to destroy the information the DOJ had obtained from his phone and Google account.
In the recent past, this outcome would have seemed unrealistic.
Ogles was already a scandal-plagued congressman when WTVF reported in late 2023 that the congressman’s financial reports showed he had made a $320,000 personal loan to his 2022 campaign. That might not have been especially problematic, since candidates routinely make such loans, were it not for the fact that Ogles’ financial disclosures suggested he didn’t have $320,000.
Months later, the Republican effectively conceded that his earlier claims weren’t true. In his revised version of events, he said he’d actually loaned his campaign $20,000, not $320,000, though it remained an open question as to who or what provided Ogles with the rest of the money.
The federal investigation into the controversy was ongoing when there was a dispute between Ogles’ lawyers and the U.S. attorney’s office over access to evidence on his phone. That matter ended up in court, but before it could be fully adjudicated, federal prosecutors withdrew from the case — about a week after Donald Trump’s second term began.
The timing did not appear coincidental, and given the degree to which the Justice Department was politically corrupted in the weeks and months that followed, it was hard not to get the impression that the investigation into Ogles was put on ice because of his political alliance with the White House. (The Tennessee Republican, among other things, is known for championing a proposal last week to allow Trump to run for a third term.)
To be fair, it’s important to emphasize that Trump’s Justice Department hasn’t officially dropped the case altogether, but given the latest developments, it’s clear that its demise is near. Watch this space.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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