Image Credit: Vivian Jones / The Center Square
The Center Square [By Jon Styf] –
The Campaign for Accountability wants the U.S. attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee to investigate whether Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton violated any laws by accepting per diem lodging expenses during the legislative session while living in Nashville.
The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit watchdog group, citing reporting from Judd Legum of Popular Information, said Sexton has been living full-time in Nashville while representing Crossville and receiving per diem lodging expenses for those legislators who live more than 50 miles from the Capitol.
The group is asking District Attorney General Glenn Funk to investigate whether Sexton “violated any state or federal criminal laws, including felony theft, honest services fraud, and tax fraud.”
Sexton told reporters recently he lives in Crossville but is in Nashville five months of the year during the legislative session.
The report says Sexton attempted to hide the purchase of his Nashville home by buying it under the name “Beccani Trust,” though it was bought through one of Crossville’s branches of One Bank Tennessee, where Sexton is a member of the board and works.
The nonprofit group says, since August 2020, Sexton “appears to have deliberately and wrongly applied for, self-approved, and improperly received taxpayer-funded payments totaling approximately $79,954.”
The report also says Sexton reported the lodging per diem as nontaxable, which it believes is a federal tax law violation because all payments from an employer must be reported as taxable gross income unless a specific exemption applies.
About the Author: Jon Styf, The Center Square Staff Reporter – Jon Styf is an award-winning editor and reporter who has worked in Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan in local newsrooms over the past 20 years, working for Shaw Media, Hearst and several other companies. Follow Jon on Twitter @JonStyf.
6 Responses
It seems that Juddlegum is confused about his claims. First he claims Sexton charged mileage expenses for round trip to Nashville and produced a form which showed no claims for travel mileage. Then claims travel expenses are income, rather than reimbursable.
Sexton should get the meal/incidental rate, but not the lodging. It isn’t reportable as income until you show the lodging was a false claim. Then it is unreported income to the IRS.
But since Ophelia Ford charged plane tickets until caught (with no consequences) and Richard Briggs can pretend to live in an apartment with zero water use while he lives in another district by the lake, for several years, and they gerrymander the district to now capture his lake house, Cameron really shouldn’t be expected to not abuse (steal?) the no-receipts per diem system. There is only one obvious solution:
Nashville will now have to be gerrymandered into Crossville. It’s really the only way. It is just too unreasonable to expect elected representatives to actually live in the district they “represent”.
Let them audit the records!
THE left are after him for standing up to the left wing ANTI GUN people who stormed the capital. AND threw out the 3 SCUM BANGS, THE LEFT always tries to discredit any one who stand against them
I think the author Jon Styf is a Lib – read this and decide for yourself. I will no longer trust him. This is a Lib article based on an attack on Sexton by a Lib group and a progressive Lib. He says Campaign for Accountability is a “nonprofit watchdog group”. I was suspicious – this is an attack on Sexton just after he punished the Libs who who were involved in the riot. I did 2 minutes of research and found >
Wikepedia says > “Campaign for Accountability (CfA) is a liberal 501(c)(3) non-profit”
Influence Watch says > “CfA typically targets conservative government officials or organizations in its investigations and has two Democratic operatives serving on its board of directors.” “CfA has called for the investigations of dozens of conservative lawmakers and Cabinet secretaries”
The article is based on an article by a Lib > “Judd Legum is the sole writer and was the original founder of the liberal news website ThinkProgress, which is now defunct. Judd Legum also worked for the Clinton campaign in 2008.”
According to Influence Watch – https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/campaign-for-accountability/
The Campaign for Accountability (CfA) is an ostensibly nonpartisan left-wing advocacy organization founded to expose supposed misconduct and corruption in the government and private sector. CfA typically targets conservative government officials or organizations in its investigations and has two Democratic operatives serving on its board of directors.
CfA was formed by alumni of another left-wing “watchdog” organization, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Its board of directors includes two Democratic political consultants.1
CfA is a former project of the Hopewell Fund, a left-of-center 501(c)(3) funding and fiscal sponsorship nonprofit and part of the multi-million-dollar “dark money” network managed by Arabella Advisors, a consultancy in Washington, DC. 2 It obtained independent tax status as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in May 2017. 3
CfA has called for the investigations of dozens of conservative lawmakers and Cabinet secretaries including former Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. American Oversight, another left-of-center legal advocacy group, has represented CfA in litigation.4
https://www.influencewatch.org/person/judd-legum/
The person mentioned in the article, Judd Legum, according to Influence Watch, “Judd Legum is the founder and long-time editor in chief of the now-defunct left-of-center media outlet ThinkProgress, which was published by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the lobbying arm of the Center for American Progress, a leading left-of-center think tank. 1”