On Friday, Columbus business partners Jabari Edwards and Antwann Richardson were acquitted on all federal charges connected to alleged misuse of federal pandemic funds.
The Columbus men each faced 17 criminal counts, including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and making false statements. The prosecution claimed the pair defrauded the government of about $3.3 million in federal pandemic relief funds
The results speak for themselves. The verdict was an emphatic rejection of the government’s case. The federal government either didn’t have a case or it utterly failed to prove it.
The prosecution seemed to focus on how much trouble the J5-related businesses were in, which falls far short of being a criminal offense. The prosecution fixated on the North Atlantic Security ownership timeline and when that business was sold versus when they applied for COVID money, but the evidence showed the federal loan applications were made when the defendants still owned NAS.
Complicating all cases like this is that the rules regarding these federal pandemic funds changed multiple times, and a lot of gray areas existed where honest mistakes could and often were made. The fact that the rules were sometimes a moving target only underlines the importance that only slam dunk cases regarding misused COVID money should be prosecuted. Ultimately, the prosecution didn’t do a good job proving the COVID money was used inappropriately. Case closed.
The not-guilty verdict does not erase the humiliation heaped upon Edwards and Richardson on a sunny June morning in 2022, when FBI agents and other law enforcement swarmed the J5 offices at Court Square Towers in Columbus in a show of force you might expect for dangerous criminals.
The not-guilty verdict did not erase almost 22 months of suspicion, innuendo and a natural tendency to assume that where there’s smoke there is fire. It did not erase the embarrassment of trial testimony that painted an unflattering portrait of businesses in trouble but achieved nothing else.
The not-guilty verdict did not reimburse either defendant for the cost of their legal defense, even as their income evaporated.
And even with the not-guilty verdict, there are some who, having already made up their minds long before the eight-day trial began, will not view this as an exoneration of the defendants but as incompetence of the prosecutors.
In a civil case where the verdict is so overwhelmingly in favor of the defendants, a case might be made for malicious prosecution. Criminal prosecuting attorneys are protected from liability for malicious prosecution by the doctrine of prosecutorial immunity. There is no avenue available to right this wrong for Edwards and Richardson.
As of May 2023, the Office of Inspector General’s investigation into fraudulent pandemic relief funds has resulted in 1,011 indictments, 803 arrests and 529 convictions.
The indictments, arrests and convictions are big news.
The acquitals often receive far less attention.
Edwards and Richardson are not made whole by the verdict, despite the unequivocal message sent by the jury.
What is lost remains lost, likely forever.
And no one is held accountable for that.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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