A close friend and supporter of a Nebraska congressman told a federal jury Friday that he acted as a middleman in a plot that funneled $30,000 from a Nigerian-born billionaire to the Republican lawmaker’s reelection campaign through straw donors.
On the third day of Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Toufic Baaklini said that he received the cash from the son of businessman Gilbert Chagoury, the source of the funds. He testified that he then left the cash in an envelope in the car of an L.A.-based doctor to distribute for the 2016 Fortenberry fundraiser in the city.
