Defense attorneys tried to poke holes Monday in the corruption case against a former Tennessee House speaker and his ex-top aide, saying they were starting a small political consulting company and simply made mistakes.
During closing arguments, Nashville defense attorney Ed Yarbrough said federal prosecutors “twisted” the law to create a litany of charges against his client, Glen Casada.
Casada and his former chief of staff, Cade Cothren, are charged with 19 counts of bribery, kickbacks, fraud and money laundering connected to a secretive political vendor named Phoenix Solutions that operated from late 2019 to mid-2020.
Casada and Cothren are accused of hiding Cothren’s role in Phoenix Solutions after he resigned from his state job in early 2019 in the midst of a racist and sexist texting scandal. Former Rep. Robin Smith of Hixson pleaded guilty to one charge three years ago and testified against the pair in hopes of getting a lesser sentence.
Yarbrough cast doubt on whether the federal charges filed against his client and Cothren even amounted to criminal activity, instead saying they were “amateur” business people who made “rookie errors.”