{"id":1668046,"date":"2022-10-01T16:04:50","date_gmt":"2022-10-01T20:04:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1668046"},"modified":"2022-10-01T16:05:45","modified_gmt":"2022-10-01T20:05:45","slug":"convictions-in-fbi-sting-of-politician-should-be-thrown-out-legal-scholar-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/convictions-in-fbi-sting-of-politician-should-be-thrown-out-legal-scholar-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Convictions in FBI Sting of Politician Should Be Thrown Out, Legal Scholar Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fconvictions-in-fbi-sting-of-politician-should-be-thrown-out-legal-scholar-says%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1668046&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>An <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-ohio\">Ohio<\/a> politician who was ensnared in an FBI \u201csting\u201d wants his two <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-corruption\">corruption<\/a>-related convictions thrown out\u2014a challenge that ought to prevail, says a legal scholar who has followed the case closely.<\/p>\n<p>Lawyers for Alexander \u201cP.G.\u201d Sittenfeld, a former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-cincinnati\">Cincinnati<\/a> city councilman who was convicted of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-bribery\">bribery<\/a> and attempted extortion this summer, filed motions for acquittal and a new trial on Sept. 30 in the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/img.theepochtimes.com\/assets\/uploads\/2022\/09\/01\/Ken-Katkin.jpg\"><\/a> Ken Katkin, professor of law at Northern Kentucky University. (Courtesy of Northern Kentucky University Chase School of Law) <\/p>\n<p>While such post-trial motions are common, they rarely succeed. But Ken Katkin, a professor of law at Northern Kentucky University near Cincinnati, opined that Sittenfeld\u2019s main argument is valid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t think there was any crime here at all,\u201d Katkin told The Epoch Times, predicting that Sittenfeld will eventually win a reversal. He thinks the prosecution of Sittenfeld was an \u201coverreach,\u201d resulting from the FBI\u2019s making corruption cases a top priority.<\/p>\n<p>Federal prosecutors didn\u2019t immediately respond to a reporter\u2019s emails requesting comment.<\/p>\n<p> Controversies Followed Verdict <\/p>\n<p>The latest actions in the case came days after a federal appeals court refused to allow Sittenfeld\u2019s lawyers to dig into the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/t-cellphone\">cellphone<\/a> of \u201cJuror X,\u201d who had repeatedly posted on Facebook about her jury experience during Sittenfeld\u2019s trial.<\/p>\n<p>After questioning Juror X and three other jurors, judges ruled they found no evidence that her actions tainted the verdict, so no further invasion of her privacy was warranted.<\/p>\n<p>Although jurors convicted Sittenfeld on two federal charges in July, they acquitted him of four similar counts\u2014a sign of the jury\u2019s \u201cobvious confusion\u201d because the allegations related to the same patterns of conduct, his attorneys wrote.<\/p>\n<p> Bogus Developers <\/p>\n<p>Events leading to Sittenfeld\u2019s prosecution began in 2018. Undercover FBI agents, posing as would-be real-estate developers, approached Sittenfeld and began discussing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An Ohio politician who was ensnared in an FBI \u201csting\u201d wants his two corruption-related convictions thrown out\u2014a challenge that ought to prevail, says a legal scholar who has followed the case closely. Lawyers for Alexander \u201cP.G.\u201d Sittenfeld, a former Cincinnati city councilman who was convicted of bribery and attempted extortion this summer, filed motions for [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1196,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1668046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1668046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1668046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1668046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1668046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1668046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1668046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}