DOJ Drops Another Fraud Case For a Client of Bondi’s Brother (1)

The Justice Department dismissed a criminal wire fraud indictment of two St. Louis real estate developers, the second reversal this month benefiting a white-collar client of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s brother.

Brad Bondi, a Paul Hastings partner who represented one of the construction company owners accused last September of 11 counts of wire fraud to earn millions in unlawful tax incentives, successfully convinced DOJ to seek a court dismissal Wednesday. The judge approved it.

The interim US attorney in St. Louis justified the move by arguing that the women and minority business programs the defendants allegedly defrauded are unconstitutional.

It marked an about face from a motion he signed Aug. 4 defending the merits of the prosecution. Interim US Attorney Thomas Albus’s latest filing—which didn’t include the signature of the case’s sole line prosecutor—focused on a June letter from DOJ Solicitor General John Sauer invalidating aspects of race and sex-based business enterprise programs.

Bondi’s firm had defended co-defendant Sid Chakraverty from the get go but he entered his first court appearance July 15.

In a post on LinkedIn, Bondi said he’d been involved in the case for “several years.” He congratulated the defendants, writing that the government agreed with his contention “that the St. Louis program (under which our clients were being prosecuted) was unconstitutional.”

Bondi and his firm didn’t respond to questions about whether he communicated with the attorney general or other members of her leadership team about this case.

“This decision was made through proper channels, and the Attorney General had no role in it,” said DOJ spokesman Gates McGavick in a statement.

The dismissal comes less than three weeks after another Bondi client, Carolina Amesty, secured an identical outcome. Amesty, a Republican state legislator in Florida, had been charged in January—three days before Trump took office—with stealing government property related to Covid-19 relief fraud.

The chief prosecutor in the Middle District of Florida, Gregory Kehoe, moved for Amesty’s dismissal Aug. 6 “in the interest of justice.” The judge has also signed off on that resolution.

Brad Bondi’s successive victories come after he was overwhelmingly defeated in June in his bid for DC bar association president. That race garnered unusually wide attention and voter participation amid criticism—which he denied—that Bondi would interfere with disciplinary proceedings against allies of President Donald Trump.

The attorney general has been welcoming defense lawyers to make arguments as to why particular criminal prosecutions should be ended due to what she’s called the Biden administration’s weaponization.

The more recent dismissal was reported on earlier by the St. Louis Business Journal and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In a statement from their spokesman, Chakraverty and his business partner and co-defendant Vic Alston credited “the wisdom and integrity of their counsel, especially Brad Bondi, Renato Mariotti, and Jeff Jensen, who righteously and compellingly made clear that this case should never have been brought.”

Jensen, who was US attorney in St. Louis during Trump’s prior term, made his first docket appearance Aug. 7. A day later the district court judge presiding over the case recused himself and reassigned it to avoid an appearance of impropriety. The judge, Matthew Schelp, founded a law firm with Jensen in 2010.