The indictment covers events involving Mr. Gillum and Ms. Lettman-Hicks from 2016 to 2019. The false statements charge against Mr. Gillum is related to his interactions with the undercover agents.
According to the indictment, beginning in 2016, Mr. Gillum and two unnamed associates solicited campaign contributions from the undercover agents for Mr. Gillum’s newly formed Forward Florida political action committee. To keep the agents’ names private, the associates promised to funnel the contributions in other ways, including through Ms. Lettman-Hicks’s company, P&P Communications. In exchange, they were promised “unencumbered government contracts,” according to one of the unnamed associates.
Mr. Gillum told one of the undercover agents that he “should separate in his mind the campaign contributions and the Tallahassee projects,” the indictment says, adding that Mr. Gillum also “indicated he looked favorably on” the undercover agent’s proposed development projects.
The indictment says that when Mr. Gillum voluntarily spoke to F.B.I. agents in 2017, he “falsely represented” that the undercover agents posing as developers never offered him anything and that he had stopped communicating with them after they tried to link their contributions to support for potential Tallahassee projects.
The fraud and conspiracy charges are related to Mr. Gillum’s dealings with Ms. Lettman-Hicks with regards to P&P Communications and Mr. Gillum’s campaign.
In 2017, when he became a candidate for governor, Mr. Gillum resigned from his position with People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group whose Tallahassee office was leased from Ms. Lettman-Hicks. Mr. Gillum lost his annual $122,500 salary, and Ms. Lettman-Hicks lost $3,000 in monthly rent. Mr. Gillum was also paid about $70,500 a year as mayor, a position he held from 2014 to 2018.
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