Here’s the latest from Commissioner Michael O’Donnell’s trial
Sedgwick County Commissioner Michael O’Donnell is being tried in federal court this week on wire fraud and money laundering charges alleging he misspent campaign funds. He’s pleaded not guilty to 26 felony counts. The trial kicked off Monday with jury selection and opening statements from attorneys.
Here’s the latest from court Tuesday:
5:40 p.m.: Colby Rankin says he understood the Aspen ski trip he took in December 2015 with Michael O’Donnell and others to be a “winter hang out” among friends — not compensation for his prior work on O’Donnell’s campaigns.
“I think I was compensated fairly,” he said, referring to the time he spent on on those prior campaign-related duties, like picking up trash and knocking on constituents’ doors.
He said didn’t know why O’Donnell wanted him to cash a $1,000 check at a Wichita Intrust Bank branch in January 2016. O’Donnell, he said, had asked him to meet him at the bank. “He handed me the check and I was told to go inside and cash it,” Rankin told jurors.
“I brought it (the money) back outside and gave it to Michael,” he said, adding that he never questioned the transaction. Rankin didn’t keep any of the bills for himself.
More than two years later, in early 2018, when the FBI asked him what the check was for, Rankin told investigators he didn’t know.
O’Donnell, he said, didn’t tell him until they were on the drive home from a March Madness trip he’d taken some friends on to Nebraska that the the $1,000 check was connected to the 2015 ski trip. He says the check came up in conversation after O’Donnell casually asked Rankin if he’s talked to the FBI.
Jurors are due back in court Wednesday at 8:30 a.m.
2:40 p.m.: Michael O’Donnell’s former campaign manager never saw at least one friend who received checks from O’Donnell’s campaign account doing any campaign-related work. But he said he was never concerned that anything improper was going on.
Dalton Glasscock told jurors he questioned O’Donnell about David Jorgenson’s role after he noticed checks had been written to him out of the “Michael for Sedgwick County” campaign account. He said he wanted to make sure Jorgenson was actually working for the pay.
Glasscock testified that O’Donnell told him Jorgenson was performing data entry work. Earlier testimony indicated that work was on donor spreadsheets.
Glasscock told jurors he thought O’Donnell was keeping track of donors and finances on his own. But he said he took O’Donnell “at his word.”
Jorgenson is one of O’Donnell’s best friends. Glasscock, who also described himself as a close friend of O’Donnell’s, introduced the two.
“I cannot recall a moment that I saw David doing work,” although he remembers seeing other friends who were paid at fundraiser and other events, including Colby Rankin and Johnathan Dennill, he said. Both also received some of the checks at issue in the trial.
Glasscock testified that there’s no set way campaigns pay employees or volunteers for their work and that O’Donnell’s generosity is a driving force behind his political success because it motivated his campaign staff. He said he made $2,500 a month working as O’Donnell’s campaign manager, duties of which included giving advice and strategizing.
“To this day, are you concerned that he (O’Donnell) was doing anything improper?” defense attorney Joshua Ney asked.
“No,” Glasscock replied.
12:50 p.m.: A retired FBI special agent’s testimony Tuesday gave a glimpse into exactly how much Michael O’Donnell paid for some of the work he claims was done on “Michael for Kansas” and “Michael for Sedgwick County” campaigns.
Charles Pritchett said in court that one friend of O’Donnell’s the FBI interviewed, David Jorgenson, said O’Donnell paid him $750 at least twice for four to five hours of work creating donor spreadsheets. Another time he earned $600 for an hour or two of work on the spreadsheets, Pritchett said Jorgenson told him.
Other payments Jorgenson received include $250 for walking in a parade and making some of O’Donnell’s campaign signs.
Pritchett also said O’Donnell also wrote off as a campaign-related expense more than $1,000 he spent taking his friends to see a Garth Brooks concert where he held a fundraiser.
Some of the checks at the center of federal prosecutors’ case went to friends who were paid to be on stand by if the campaign needed them, defense attorney Mark Schoenhofer said in court — including one who received $300 to $550 monthly for six months.
11:05 a.m.: Retired FBI special agent Charles Pritchett says he never asked O’Donnell’s friends whether the $1,000 checks were for bonuses for campaign work and didn’t ask the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission what the rules are for paying campaign workers.
Under defense questioning, Pritchett agreed that O’Donnell never told friends to keep the transactions quiet, nor made any statements indicating the transactions might be illegal.
While in Aspen, O’Donnell told his friends that he was paying for the group ski trip “as a bonus for their work on the campaigns” and used his personal credit card to do so, defense attorney Mark Schoenhofer told him. The $1,000 checks, he said, were to reimburse O’Donnell for those charges. The trip cost O’Donnell around $2,600.
Pritchett agreed that campaign finance law doesn’t prohibit a candidate from paying bonuses to campaign workers. But, he said, O’Donnell was the only person who saw a net gain through the transactions. He pointed out that Dennill, who got one of the $1,000 checks, paid for his travel and most of his own costs.
Earlier Pritchett testified that he didn’t audio or video record any of his interviews conducted with O’Donnell’s friends in 2018 — only took written notes. He said in the past the FBI had a policy against recording and that an agent’s “word was his word.” There always was at least one other law enforcement officer present during the interviews, he said.
10:20 a.m.: Friends of Michael O’Donnell’s who received the checks at the center of his wire fraud and money laundering trial told investigators that they didn’t work for the pay, a retired FBI agent testified Tuesday. One friend interviewed, Jack Masterson, told retired FBI agent Charles Pritchett that O’Donnell “felt sorry for him” after his father died and decided to help by writing him one check a month for six consecutive months. Another, David Jorgenson, received 21 checks written on the campaign accounts but only worked for six of them, Pritchett said.
Colby Rankin and Johnathan Dennill, the friends who each received a $1,000 check, said during FBI interview that they were confused why O’Donnell had asked them to cash them and return the money. After O’Donnell learned last year that the FBI was asking about the transactions, he told his friends the checks were to reimburse him for expenses connected to a 2015 Aspen ski trip, Pritchett testified.
O’Donnell’s campaign finance reports say those expenditures were for “event help/campaign services” and “photography services.” Both men had previously performed such work for O’Donnell while he was running for office.
This story was originally published February 26, 2019 at 10:25 AM.
