Stockman sentenced to 10 years
Ex-congressman was convicted on 23 felony counts
Former Republican congressman Steve Stockman, a Tea Party stalwart who represented East Texas for two terms, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison Wednesday for a wide-ranging scheme that included spying on a potential GOP rival and misspending charitable contributions from conservative donors. A political expert who has monitored Stockman’s political trajectory likened the right-wing firebrand’s downfall to that of President Richard Nixon, who was also disgraced for spying on opponents and covering up payoffs and other financial misdeeds.
Stockman, 61, of Clear Lake, is different, of course, in that he was convicted on April 12 of 23 felony counts for illegally diverting for his own personal use $1.25 million in donations to his federal election campaigns. He has spent the past
six months in 12-man cell in a Conroe jail awaiting his sentence.
Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal said the ex-lawmaker’s sentence should take into account that Stockman hired workers to sneak around and rifle through trash of a perceived opponent from his own party. It was important to consider that Stockman cheated taxpayers and constituents, attempted to cover up his acts to avoid detection and continued to seek the political spotlight all the while, the judge said.
“You stole money and used it for personal gain and you used it to violate the public trust,” Rosenthal told Stockman, who stood before her in an orange jail uniform and beige rubber clogs that were chained together at the ankles. “You cheated the American taxpayer.”
In addition to his prison term, the judge ordered him to serve three years of supervised release and repay $1.014 million to foundations run by two deep-pocketed donors.
Stockman, who remained silent during his sentencing, smiled and blew a kiss to his wife as a U.S. Marshal led him out through a side door.
A prosecutor asked that Stockman be given an enhanced sentence of 14 years on the grounds that he allegedly duped a vulnerable 86year-old Baltimore philanthropist into giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“Mr. Stockman demonstrated that he was not somebody who felt himself bound by the law or by the rules,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Heberle. “He lied over and over and over again to people who were in charge of charitable foundations to get money that could have gone to legitimate charitable causes.”
Defense lawyer Marlo P. Cadeddu asked for 13 months — the average sentence for public corruption. The judge said that term “doesn’t come close to capturing this unique violation of the public trust.”
After sentencing, defense attorney Charles Flood, said his client did not address the judge because the Stockman was afraid he might become too emotional.
“Steve remains hopeful,” Flood said. “He believes in his innocence and he maintains his faith on appeal.”
Two former congressional aides Thomas Dodd, 39, of Houston, and Jason Posey, 48, of Tupelo, Miss., pleaded guilty to helping in the fraud and gave key testimony at trial. They are set for sentencing on Dec. 12.
Texas’s Richard Nixon
Stockman rose to prominence in the mid-90s as U.S. representative for a swath of East Texas counties. He cut short a second term that began in 2013 to launch a failed bid for John Cornyn’s seat in the U.S. Senate. Stockman’s politics were in line with the Tea Party’s conservative libertarian thinking before that party ever existed, according to Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at University of Houston who has studied Texas politics.
“Stockman unseated long-serving liberal Congressman Jack Brooks, which was a signal that a new conservative movement was taking hold in Texas,” said Rottinghaus. “He was part of a new breed of conservatives that were reshaping Texas and American politics.”
The UH scholar sees Stockman as “Texas’s Richard Nixon” because he siphoned off funds and orchestrated amateur political surveillance.
Dolphin watching
Stockman was arrested in 2017 as he attempted to board a flight to the Middle East in 2017. The federal inquiry followed investigations of Stockman by the Sunlight Foundation and the Houston Chronicle that examined a series of 2013 checks that straw donors made to Stockman’s depleted congressional campaign fund.
Federal agents had gathered evidence that the exrepresentative had committed wire and mail fraud, laundered the illegal proceeds of his crimes, violated federal election law and lied on a tax return.
In the trial that followed, prosecutors introduced reams of documents how Stockman attributed donations to two aides and then revised documents to say that the funds had been donated by the aides’ parents. The jury also found that Stockman had funneled charitable donations through a series of sham nonprofit organizations and shell bank accounts to spend on an array of personal expenses that included his brother’s homemade Advent books and a dolphin-watching trip.
One project was an amateur spy operation that trailed a perceived GOP rival, state Rep. James White, R-Hillister, around the statehouse in Austin.
White, who was just reelected to his seat, said Wednesday he found it strange that Stockman would invest in surveillance right after he was sworn in for his second congressional term.
“Instead of concentrating on all these other issues we have in the country — health care, border security, war in the Middle East — his first intuition was his own political survival rather than the survival of ordinary Texans,” White said.
Supporters show up
Present at the sentencing was Mark Michalek, a special agent who oversees public corruption investigations in the FBI’s Houston office.
He said the office has looked into many complex, multijurisdictional schemes by officials who use their positions for personal profit.
But he noted that cases like Stockman’s don’t come to the FBI unless people report fraud.
“Preserving the public’s trust in government is a responsibility that we don’t take lightly,” he said, noting that, “we rely heavily on the public’s help in investigating these crimes.”
Stockman’s wife Patti sat in court with nearly 20 friends and constituents who came to support her husband. Fifteen supporters and one fellow jail inmate also submitted letters to the judge praising Stockman’s good deeds. His wife said she has been overwhelmed by the support, including an email that came Tuesday about a classroom of schoolchildren who were praying for him.
Patti Stockman thinks the criminal case was politically motivated.
“My husband was a very vocal whistleblower about the corruption of the Obama administration,” she said.