Powerful NC politician who stole from GOP donors shouldn’t go to prison, feds say
One of the formerly most powerful lawmakers in North Carolina likely won’t be spending any time behind bars for a campaign-finance scheme that prosecutors say he ran to defraud conservative donors.
On Tuesday, federal prosecutors recommended only probation for David Lewis, who could have faced up to 30 years in prison, The News & Observer previously reported. Lewis pleaded guilty to multiple federal crimes last year and gave back the money he took, rather than trying to fight the case at trial, which prosecutors said contributed to their decision to go easy on him.
Lewis violated the trust of his donors, voters and constituents, prosecutors wrote Tuesday, when he took donors’ money, filed false tax reports and lied on state campaign-finance records.
“Nevertheless, Lewis has since admitted to his conduct, pleaded guilty, and accepted responsibility,” the prosecution wrote, in recommending that he only receive probation and not active time in prison.
Lewis agreed with the prosecution’s decision in a new court filing Wednesday morning. His attorney, Josh Howard, said the destruction of his reputation, farming business and political career should be punishment enough.
“As a result of this crime, he lost his political career, whatever pride a congenitally modest man carries, and — in all likelihood — what little remains of the farm and his longstanding livelihood,” Howard wrote.
The News & Observer reported last year, when Lewis pleaded guilty to making false statements to a bank and failing to file taxes, that under the terms of the plea, prosecutors agreed to eventually seek a sentence ranging from probation to, at the most, six months in prison.
It’s now up to a judge to decide whether to accept the prosecution’s recommendation. And the judge overseeing the case has a history with Lewis, having been part of a three-judge panel that threw out redistricting plans that Lewis led the way in creating, calling them unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.
Howard wrote Wednesday that he hopes federal District Judge Max Cogburn can put that aside — and recognize that in many ways, that redistricting lawsuit was the beginning of a downward spiral for Lewis due to “the immense time and attention it mandated from David to the detriment of his health and farming interests. “
A fake NC GOP bank account
A Harnett County Republican who served in the General Assembly from 2003 to 2020, Lewis chaired one of the most influential committees at the General Assembly and for much of the last decade was the House of Representatives’ point person for voting and elections issues like redistricting and voter ID.
His position as chairman of the gatekeeping House Rules Committee meant that he had wide latitude to decide which bills would live or die at the legislature. If a bill doesn’t get a hearing in that committee, it can’t go to the floor for a vote. That also meant Lewis was a top GOP fundraiser, getting hefty political donations from people and PACs with an interest in seeing their bills succeed or their opponents’ bills fail.
But then his farm started to go under.
So in the 2018 midterm elections, Lewis came up with a plot to use his political donors’ money to pay his own bills, instead of for the intended purpose of helping his and other Republicans’ campaigns.
Over the first five months of 2018 he secretly transferred around $300,000 from his campaign account to a bank account for his farm. Then in June he took it a step further. Lewis set up a bank account for a fake group called NC GOP, Inc. His campaign started funneling donors’ money into that bank account, falsely listing the payments on campaign finance reports as going to the North Carolina Republican Party. He took another $65,000 through that method.
He later paid the money back — $300,000 to his campaign and $65,000 to the Republican Party — which prosecutors say factored into their leniency.
Supporters at the legislature, church
When Lewis added his statements to the prosecution’s recommendation Wednesday, he also included three letters of reference. None are from his former state House colleagues, but one is from a fellow top Republican lawmaker and farmer, Sen. Brent Jackson of Sampson County. Jackson is a lead budget writer and also chairs the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Energy, and Environment.
Jackson said they met in the 1990s when Lewis sold Jackson a tractor, and Lewis was later the one who encouraged him to get into politics.
“He spent many years in Raleigh, sacrificing time away from his family, business and friends to very difficult and time-consuming work on behalf of the members of his community,” Jackson wrote, adding that he still believes Lewis is “a fundamentally good man.”
Lewis also received letters of support from Dylan Reel, a legislative staffer who used to work for Lewis, and Jim Musilek. Musilek said their sons played football together at Raleigh’s Cardinal Gibbons High School and that Lewis has recently converted to Catholicism, with Musilek as his sponsor during the monthslong process.
Reel also mentioned Lewis’ religious conversion, which happened last summer around the same time he pleaded guilty. He said Lewis “is walking the path of a Godly man seeking forgiveness and grace during this time.”
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