A House Democrat facing more than 350 years in federal prison may finance her criminal defense with money from corporations overseen by her congressional committees—companies that also funded the nonprofit she is accused of using to illegally funnel cash to herself.
The Justice Department charged Rep. Corrine Brown (D., Fla.) and her chief of staff last week with 24 counts of fraud, obstruction, and theft of government property. They accuse Brown of using her position to solicit donations to a group called One Door for Education, then extracting "tens of thousands of dollars in cash deposits" and other perks from the group.
One Door’s donors include a number of contributors to Brown’s legal defense fund, which she set up in 2010 to finance a lawsuit, since appealed to the Supreme Court, challenging a Florida redistricting order that she says makes it impossible for an African American to win her seat.
Brown has refused to say whether she will use that fund to pay for her defense against the federal criminal charges. Her spokesman referred questions to Brown’s chief of staff—and co-defendant—Ronnie Simmons, who did not respond to questions.
According to the fund's founding documents, it can be used to finance "all reasonable, necessary, and appropriate legal fees or charges incurred by the [congresswoman] in connection with his [sic] official duties and position in Congress."
If the money in that fund does finance her legal defense, some of the same donors to One Door that Brown used to illegally enrich herself will have financed efforts to ensure she is not punished for it.
According to DOJ, the fraudulent activity took place between 2012 and early 2016.
"Brown, Simmons, and Carla Wiley, the president of One Door, among others, used the vast majority of One Door donations for their personal and professional benefit," according to a press release announcing the indictment.
Brown pleaded not guilty and vowed to fight the charges. It is not her first time battling corruption allegations: The DOJ previously asked the House Ethics Committee to drop a separate probe into her ties to One Door, a rare occurrence.
"Since 2010, that has happened just twice: Republican Michael Grimm and Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr.," Politico noted. "In both cases, the targets of the investigation served jail time." Brown faces a maximum sentence of 357 years.
The Florida Times-Union first reported her involvement with One Door in a January story that named a number of its donors. They included trade associations and member companies that also donated to Brown’s legal defense fund, according to records on file at the House Clerk’s office. Top executives at other corporate donors to One Door have also supported the fund.
Brown herself has steered supporters’ money to One Door. Her leadership PAC wrote the group a $10,000 check in 2013 and her campaign committee donated another $2,000 last year.
In total, companies and individuals that have donated to One Door, or to political groups that supported the ostensible nonprofit (it never actually received tax-exempt status, according to DOJ), also contributed $45,000 to Brown’s legal defense fund between 2010 and 2015, the latest year for which the House Clerk has publicly available records on file.
All but one of the overlapping donors have ties to the railroad or cruise ship industries, both of which are overseen by one of two Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) subcommittees on which Brown sits.
She chaired a T&I subcommittee overseeing the railroad industry until 2011 and was its ranking Democrat until last year. While she held those positions, the American Association of Railroads, the industry’s chief lobbying group, donated more than $10,000 to One Door and $15,000 to Brown’s legal defense fund.
Rail company CSX, Brown’s top campaign contributor, has donated $5,000 to One Door. Its chairman and chief executive Michael Ward has given $10,000 to Brown’s legal defense fund. Like AAR, CSX listed its One Door contributions on lobbyist disclosure forms that identified Brown as the payments’ "honoree."
CSX did not respond to a request for comment. AAR declined to comment, citing Brown’s ongoing legal proceedings.
Brown also sits on a T&I subcommittee in charge of maritime commerce and transportation. In that capacity, she oversees cruise ship companies, which have provided significant financial support for her campaigns and her legal defense while also donating to One Door.
The industry provided most of the financing for a political group called the Community Leadership PAC that gave $25,000 to One Door in August 2012. Princess Cruise Lines has given that group $325,000. Holland America Line has donated $125,000. Each of those companies has contributed $5,000 to Brown’s legal defense fund.
Other donors to the PAC include cruise line company Royal Caribbean, its president Adam Goldstein, and its chief executive Richard Fain. Fain and his wife have each contributed $5,000 to Brown’s legal defense fund.
Goldstein and the Fains have also donated to an industry trade association called the Cruise Lines International Association PAC. That group has given $5,000 to Brown’s legal defense, as well as $27,500 to her campaigns since 2008.
Another of Community Leadership PAC’s donors was the firm Alcalde and Fay, which employs Brown’s daughter Shantrel Brown-Fields as a lobbyist. Her role at the firm was the source of controversy in 2007 after it was revealed that the congresswoman had earmarked funds for one of her daughter’s clients.
She also requested a $750,000 earmark for the Jacksonville-based Community Rehabilitation Center, a Brown-Fields client, in 2010. According to the DOJ, which identified the Center, a nonprofit, as Entity B, Brown fraudulently claimed to have given it $10,000 in order to get a tax write-down.
The Department of Justice notes that an individual identified only as Person B also received illegal cash payments from One Door, and passed along some of the money to Brown. The indictment says "Person B was a close relative of Brown, and a lobbyist in the Washington D.C. area."
Shantrel-Brown "appears to be Person B," the Times-Union noted in a story on the indictment.
The DOJ describes many of One Door’s donors as victims of fraudulent misrepresentations of the group’s activities by Brown and Simmons. However, experts say the flow of money suggest efforts to win influence with a key member of Congress.
Donations to legal defense funds can be potent tools for doing so, according to Sheila Krumholz, a spokeswoman for the Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors money in government and political campaigns.
"Where they exist, donations to them are at least as influential as campaign donations, if not more so, because these are donors who are giving to a candidate who is embattled on some level," Krumholz said in an email.
"The donors could be risking their own good reputation to support someone who is being accused of legal violations or threatened with a lawsuit," Krumholz explained. "So, theoretically, the candidate may be even more grateful to those who fund their legal defense."
Whether there was any agreement between Brown and any of the companies financing both her allegedly illicit nonprofit and her legal defense fund is a difficult question, according to Krumholz.
"That the same companies and executives that financed a group allegedly used to illegally enrich a member of congress would ‘double down’ by also financing her defense might signify the strength of their relationship, or perhaps the member's importance to their legislative agenda," she said.
"It may also be taken as a measure of their confidence that no violation occurred."