Copyright Anchorage Daily News
President Donald Trump has pardoned the former Tennessee House speaker and his former top aide in the state legislature just weeks after they were sentenced to prison on public corruption charges. Glen Casada, who was ousted from his position as the Republican speaker of the Tennessee House just months into the job in 2019, received a phone call from Trump on Thursday informing him of the decision, said his attorney, Ed Yarbrough. Casada, 66, was sentenced in September to three years in federal prison on charges related to a kickback and bribery arrangement involving the legislature’s state-funded constituent mailer program. Cade Cothren, 38, previously Casada’s chief of staff, was also convicted of fraud and related federal charges and sentenced to two and a half years in prison. They were due to report to prison later this month. Cothren, who resigned amid allegations of making sexual advances to a state legislative intern, drug use in the state Capitol complex and sending racist text messages, also received a call from Trump informing him of the pardon, Yarbrough said. Both men had pleaded not guilty to federal charges. A White House official confirmed that Trump had approved the pardons, but the men were awaiting their paperwork as of Thursday evening, Yarbrough said. Cothren did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Their pardons are among a series of at times controversial clemencies Trump has granted in recent months for former elected officials convicted on corruption charges. Trump last month commuted the sentence of disgraced former Republican congressman George Santos, calling the ousted New York representative “somewhat of a ‘rogue.’” This spring, Trump also pardoned a former Tennessee GOP state senator, Brian Kelsey, who had just begun serving his nearly two-year sentence in a campaign finance fraud scheme. Cothren in particular had taken to social media since Trump’s reelection to claim that he was among the Republicans who have been unfairly targeted by Democrats, and to post messages of support for Trump. The White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the “Biden Department of Justice significantly over-prosecuted” the two men, and that the net financial loss to the state because of their crimes was low. “The Biden DOJ responded with an armed raid, perp walk, and suggested sentences exceeding 10 years - penalties normally reserved for multimillion dollar fraudsters,” the official said. Trump’s Department of Justice initially prosecuted the men, whose homes were raided by the FBI in January 2021, in the final days of Trump’s first term. Casada, who plotted for years to take the reins as House speaker in Tennessee’s Republican supermajority legislature, was removed from his short-lived tenure in August 2019 after a bid of no confidence by his fellow House Republicans over conduct unrelated to his prosecution. The Republican governor and lieutenant governor were among those pressing him to resign over allegations he engaged in misogynistic banter with Cothren. In one text exchange between the two men, published by the Tennessean shortly before they were ousted from their roles, the House speaker cheered on Cothren for having a sexual encounter with a woman in the bathroom of a Nashville hot chicken restaurant. After losing their primary source of income, Casada and Cothren worked together to form a new political consulting firm, Phoenix Solutions, to provide constituent mailer services to Tennessee Republican House members. Cothren assumed the false identity of “Matthew Phoenix” so state legislators would not know he was part of the business, according to their co-defendant, former GOP state Rep. Robin Smith. In total, Phoenix Solutions received approximately $159,496.48 in revenue from caucus and campaign work, according to the Middle Tennessee U.S. attorney’s office. “In a betrayal of their duty to Tennesseans, Mr. Casada and Mr. Cothren violated the integrity of our government,” Special Agent in Charge Joe Carrico of the FBI Nashville Field Office said in a September release announcing their prison terms. “The sentences imposed today should serve as a wake-up call to other public officials who believe there are no consequences for betraying the public trust.” Trump has repeatedly moved to bring relief to those he says were subject to “witch hunts” by Democrats, who he considers ultimately responsible for his own conviction last year of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a hush money trial. Among his first actions in office was to pardon virtually all of the nearly 1,600 defendants convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters and to commute the sentences of the remaining 14. His wide-reaching campaign to recalibrate a justice system he calls corrupt has led him to relieve reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, a gang leader who built a powerful criminal enterprise, an ex-congressman from New York who underreported earnings from his Manhattan restaurant and a Connecticut governor toppled in a corruption scandal, among others. Last month, he drew scrutiny after pardoning Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire executive of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. He told CBS News that he did not know who Zhao was, but took action because he “heard it was a Biden witch hunt.” In May, Trump’s crypto company, World Liberty Financial, announced a deal in which one of its crypto coins would be used in a $2 billion transaction between Binance and MGX, the state-backed Emirati investment firm.
