Image Credit: John Partipilo
By Sam Stockard [The Tennessee Lookout -CC BY-NC-ND 4.0] –
A former Tennessee House member testified Thursday she wouldn’t have used a secretive vendor called Phoenix Solutions for constituent mailers in 2019 if she’d known a fired House staffer was running the company.
Patsy Hazlewood, the former House finance committee chair who was defeated in her re-election bid last year, said on the stand in U.S. District Court that former Rep. Robin Smith misled her about the identity of Phoenix Solutions’ operators.
The prosecution termed the case an “epic fall from power” for the state’s former House speaker and his chief aide, while the defense accused the federal government of inventing a case that’s “wasting” the jury’s time.
Hazlewood, one of numerous former and current House members expected to testify in the corruption trial for former Speaker Glen Casada and his ex-chief of staff Cade Cothren, said she didn’t find out Phoenix Solutions was involved until she saw an invoice. Until then, Hazlewood said she thought Smith was handling the constituent mailers because she had run Hazlewood’s campaigns until winning election to the House.
Smith has pleaded guilty in the federal fraud and kickbacks case and is cooperating with prosecutors. She and Casada were accused of taking bribes and kickbacks to steer business to Cothren after he was fired from his post because of a sex and racist texting scandal that involved Casada, too.
Hazlewood said the scandal that surrounded Cothren “destroyed” his reputation and that she was upset by the incident.
“I had no faith or trust in his integrity,” she said, and added she wouldn’t have worked with him “in any fashion.”
Prosecutors say Casada and Smith had to cover up Cothren’s identity because of the scandal and the “embarrassment” Hazlewood said it caused.
When she inquired about Phoenix Solutions, Hazlewood said Smith told her she knew Matthew Phoenix, a bogus name for the company’s president, and that the company had operated out of East Tennessee but moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico for the “lifestyle” but still could do the mailer work.
“She vouched for his work,” Hazlewood said under questioning from Assistant U.S. Attorney Taylor Phillips.
The prosecutor introduced documents showing Phoenix Solutions formed in November 2019 in New Mexico and had an account with First Horizon Bank with Cothren as the authorized signer.
Attorneys for the defendants acknowledged that Casada and Smith concealed Cothren’s identity because of problems surrounding his departure from the legislature.
In fact, defense attorney Joy Longnecker told the 14-member jury during opening statements that the case isn’t based on whether Cothren is a “sinner” but whether he committed a federal crime. In addition to sexist and racist text messages, Cothren at the time admitted to using drugs while in state offices.
Longnecker told jurors the prosecution created a case “out of junk mail” based on Cothren’s personal indiscretions that didn’t cause the state to lose a dollar or lawmakers to be shorted on constituent mailers, informational pieces paid for with tax dollars.
She termed the case a matter of “politics and business as usual on the Hill.”
Reps. Esther Helton Haynes, of East Ridge, and Jay Reedy of Erin were called to testify after Hazlewood concluded her testimony.
Reedy, who used Phoenix Solutions for design and printing of a legislative survey that was distributed in a local newspaper, said he believed he was working with Casada and did not hear of Phoenix Solutions until FBI agents contacted him in May 2021 after federal agents had initiated an investigation into the bogus company.
In response to questioning from Phillips about his reaction to learning about Phoenix Solutions and its operations, Reedy said “In my mind, it was a very corrupted way to do business.”
Defense attorneys cast the situation as Casada, who started Right Way Consulting, and Smith, who ran Rivers Edge Alliance, being paid by Phoenix Solutions for their work rather than receiving kickbacks or bribes for steering work to his company. They admitted that Cothren ran Phoenix Solutions but did all the work requested, which totaled about $52,000.
Casada’s attorney, Ed Yarbrough, told the jury that Cameron Sexton was elected House Speaker in October 2019, after Casada stepped down, and started talking to the FBI before Phoenix Solutions and Right Way Consulting existed.
FBI agents showed up at Casada’s door in August 2021 with TV crews behind them, shooting video of the former speaker in his bathrobe, proof the media was tipped off, Yarbrough said. Yet Casada talked to the agents without an attorney, because he felt his business dealings with Cothren were legitimate, Yarbrough said. He added that Casada made only $4,000 to $7,000 on the arrangement.
Yarbrough further framed the situation of one in which House Speaker Cameron Sexton tried to get rid of Casada and then Cothren for political reasons. Cothren has claimed he helped Sexton win the speaker’s race and sought to obtain phone records to show he and Sexton communicated frequently in the fall of 2019.
Phillips characterized the case as one of “powerful politicians who used their influence to line their pockets” by hiring Cothren and his “pass-through” company to tap into the tax-funded constituent mailers for kickbacks.
The assistant U.S. attorney told jurors that Cothren used a fake identification to run the company and that he signed a federal tax document with the bogus name, “Matthew Phoenix.” Prosecutors did not introduce the document as evidence Thursday.
