Mr Gillum, 42, was also charged with making false statements to the FBI He pleaded not guilty in court Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Gillum, dressed in a navy suit with a dark tie and face mask, was handcuffed around his wrists and ankles, with a chain around his waist. Inside the courtroom were some of his friends and a bunch of reporters. He left the courthouse after his release and did not comment on the cameras and microphones waiting outside. The arrest is the latest bypass of Mr Gillum’s once-booming career. He reached a distance of 32,000 votes from the governor – something that would make him the first black governor of Florida and a future White House hopeful – only to lose his political direction and face personal struggles. In 2020, police found him in a hotel room in Miami Beach, where another man was suffering from a possible drug overdose. The allegations appear to have come from a federal investigation into Tallahassee City Hall that began in 2015 and involved FBI undercover agents posing as developers. The revelations from the investigation, including that Mr. Gillum had mingled with undercover agents in New York, where they took a boat ride to the Statue of Liberty and saw the successful Broadway musical “Hamilton”, were a theme in the 2018 campaign. Mr DeSantis, a Republican, said at the time that he could not trust Mr Gillum to run the country. Mr. Gillum, who did not disclose the gifts at the time, as required by state law, paid a $ 5,000 fine in Florida in 2019. The 21-count indictment against Mr. Gillum shows that a large court filed the charges against him on June 7. Sharon Letman-Hicks, 53, a confidant of Mr Gillum since he was in college, was also charged. According to the indictment, she used her communications company to cover up fraudulent payments to Mr. Gillum as part of her payroll. In a statement, Mr Gillum said he had conducted all his political campaigns “with integrity”. “Make no mistake that this case is not legal, it is political,” he said. “There has been a target on my back since I was mayor of Tallahassee. “Then they found nothing and I have full confidence that my legal team will prove my innocence now.” Ms Lettman-Hicks, a Democratic nominee for a seat on the State House in Tallahassee, was in a wheelchair when she appeared in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty. He declined to comment. The indictment covers facts concerning Mr. Gillum and Ms. Letman-Hicks from 2016 to 2019. The charge of making false statements against Mr. Gillum relates to his interactions with undercover agents. According to the indictment, starting in 2016, Mr. Gillum and two anonymous associates requested campaign contributions from undercover agents for Mr. Gillum’s newly formed Forward Florida Political Action Committee. To keep the agents’ names secret, the partners promised to channel the contributions in other ways, including through Lettman-Hicks’s company, P&P Communications. In return, they were promised “unencumbered government contracts,” according to one of the anonymous associates. Mr Gillum told one of the undercover agents that he “had to keep in mind the contributions to the campaign and the Tallahassee projects”, the indictment states, adding that Mr Gillum “also showed a favorable view” of the proposed development projects. of the secret agent. The indictment alleges that when Mr. Gillum voluntarily spoke to FBI agents in 2017, he “falsely pretended” that the undercover agents posing as developers never offered him anything and that he had stopped communicating with them after trying to link up their contributions. with the support of possible Tallahassee projects. The allegations of fraud and conspiracy relate to Mr Gillum’s dealings with Ms Lettman-Hicks on P&P Communications and Mr Gillum’s campaign. In 2017, when he became a candidate for governor, Mr. Gillum resigned from his position in People for the American Way, a liberal defense group whose office in Tallahassee was hired by Lettman-Hicks. Mr. Gillum lost his $ 122,500 annual salary, and Ms. Letman-Hicks lost $ 3,000 in monthly rent. Mr. Gillum was also paid about $ 70,500 a year as mayor, a position he held from 2014 to 2018. Mr. Gillum then became an employee of P&P Communications, where he was given a monthly salary of $ 10,000. According to the indictment, Mr. Gillum’s recruitment was “just a cover used to provide him with funds he lost” after his resignation from People for the American Way. When Mr. Gillum and Ms. Lettman-Hicks applied for $ 50,000 in grant funding from two unnamed organizations, the money was intended to be used to campaign for local solutions, an attempt by Mr. Gillum to thwart government efforts to thwart local government governments. Instead, according to the indictment, the money eventually went to P&P Communications to pay Mr. Gillum. In 2018, the indictment says, Mr. Gillum and Ms. Letman-Hicks cheated on an anonymous campaign donor who had given $ 250,000 to Mr. Gillum’s campaign. Instead, $ 150,000 of that went to Mr. Gillum’s Political Action Committee and P&P Communications. According to the indictment, in November 2018, $ 130,000 from the campaign had to be allocated for the “get out of the vote” efforts. Instead, $ 60,000 went to P&P Communications and was used in part to pay Mr. Gillum $ 20,000 in “bonus” payments from November 20 to 29, 2018. Eventually, it was falsely recorded in Mr. Gillum’s campaign finance report as compensation for “Get Out the Vote Canvassing.” Alexandra Glorioso contributed to the report from Tallahassee.
