In a stunning defeat for the government, jurors acquitted former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum on charges that he lied to the FBI about a “Hamilton” ticket and other gifts he took from undercover FBI agents in New York.

They deadlocked, however, on the most serious charges against Gillum, Florida’s Democratic nominee for governor in 2018, and his co-defendant, Sharon Lettman-Hicks, involving the misuse of campaign funds.

The 12-person jury, which rendered its decision Thursday after five days of deliberations and behind-the-scenes drama, was unable to reach consensus on one count of conspiracy and 17 counts of wire fraud against both defendants. U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor declared a mistrial on those counts.

The partial mistrial came after Winsor issued a special instruction called a “dynamite charge” that’s designed to “blast” verdicts out of hung juries. The jury went out for a couple of more hours before returning hopelessly deadlocked on the bulk of the charges.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Gary Milligan II said the government will retry Gillum and Lettman-Hicks on the conspiracy and wire fraud charges. Outside the courthouse later, defense attorneys urged the government to reconsider.

Gillum’s wife, R. Jai, immediately began to cry as the verdict was announced. Once the jury was dismissed, Andrew Gillum hugged and kissed her and whispered into her ear.

“Call my mama,” he said.

Inside the courtroom:An emotional scene in the courtroom after Gillum found not guilty

Gillum says he ‘persevered’ after being ‘under attack on all sides’

Gillum walked out of the U.S. Courthouse on North Adams Street surrounded by loved ones and supporters. He thanked his family, his lawyers, the news media and the jurors themselves.

“They persevered,” he said. “They showed up. They did their jobs up until the point where they realized that it was becoming increasingly challenging to try to square the zig-zag lines that had been drawn for them.”

Gillum said he and his family felt “hunted” and “under attack on all sides” for the past seven years. Undercover FBI agents cozied up to Gillum in 2016 and tried to get him to take a bribe, which even government witnesses acknowledged he never did.

“They quite literally tried to take everything from us,” Gillum said. “And the beauty is in our system, the powers that be don’t always get to decide. Everyday people like you and me sometimes get our swing at the ball. And today the jury took it.”

Lettman-Hicks, who filed to run for a state House seat last year shortly before she was indicted and later suspended her campaign, said she learned an important lesson from the trial.

“Freedom isn’t free,” she said. “If you don’t stand up for yourself, nobody else will.”

A major setback for FBI undercover ‘Operation Capital Currency’

Gillum, who narrowly lost the governor’s race to Ron DeSantis, faced up to five years in prison for making false statements. He and Lettman-Hicks also faced up to 20 years in prison on the conspiracy and wire fraud charges.

Both opted not to take the stand in their own defense. In a sign of confidence in their case, Gillum’s lawyers didn’t call a single defense witness.

The acquittal and partial mistrial marked major setbacks for the government and its long-running and costly Operation Capital Currency investigation, which saw undercover FBI agents posing as crooked developers descend on Tallahassee starting in 2015.

The investigation led to guilty pleas in 2019 from former Mayor and City Commissioner Scott Maddox and his aide, Paige Carter-Smith, and guilty verdicts against their co-defendant, developer John “J.T.” Burnette, at the end of his 2021 trial.

Jurors signaled on Tuesday and Thursday that they were struggling to reach consensus on all but the false statements charge, prompting Winsor to send back notes encouraging them to keep trying. But at least one holdout on the jury, and maybe more, didn’t budge as a result. The jury was made up of seven women and five men; five of the jurors were Black.

Racing the clock:Charges against Gillum from undercover FBI operation were about to hit statute of limitations

Gillum, 43, and Lettman-Hicks, 54, were charged in June 2022 in a 21-count indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in Tallahassee. The pair was accused of funneling donations from big donors and progressive grant-making organizations to Lettman-Hicks’ firm, P&P Communications, and ultimately Gillum to offset income he lost when he left his job with the People for the American Way Foundation to run for governor.

The government alleged that Gillum and Lettman-Hicks illegally routed $50,000 from the then-mayor’s Campaign to Defend Local Solutions, an initiative to fight state encroachment of home rule; $60,000 from Gillum’s gubernatorial campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort; and $132,000 from a $250,000 check from billionaire Donald Sussman.

Cracks in the government’s case emerged early

There were signs of cracks in the government’s case even before the trial began on April 17. Prosecutors raced to file charges ahead of the statute of limitations. Less than a week before jury selection, prosecutors dropped two wire fraud counts against both defendants in a superseding indictment.

Prosecutors presented a mountain of evidence, from wiretapped conversations and transcripts to internal Gillum campaign emails, contracts, grant agreements and financial records. But the defense turned the tables on some of that during cross-examination of government witnesses, telling jurors the evidence showed no crimes were committed.

Two undercover FBI agents, “Mike Miller” and “Brian Butler,” who posed as “seedy” investors in the phony Southern Pines Development company, testified about comments Gillum’s brother, Marcus Gillum, made that the mayor would deliver approvals for their projects in exchange for campaign donations. But that never materialized.

During the two-week trial, the government called representatives from grant-making organizations that were allegedly ripped off by the pair. But they offered up nothing in the way of tearful testimony or even that they were victimized.

A lawyer for the Foundation to Promote Open Society, a George Soros-founded organization, testified she did not have any evidence that funds were misused. A senior program officer for the New World Foundation told jurors he was not aware of any “missing” money. A representative from the Opportunity to Learn Action Fund, an offshoot of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, said he trusted Gillum’s “moral values” and considered him an “honest person.”

The trial was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Gary Milligan II, Andrew Grogan and Joseph Ravello, all three local lawyers with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Florida. During the Burnette trial, high-powered prosecutors from the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Unit handled much of the courtroom duties.

In his own words:Here’s what Gillum has said about ethics allegations, FBI probe

The defendants enlisted capable and charismatic lawyers: David Markus and Margot Moss of Miami, who represented Gillum, and Alex Morris and Mutaqee Akbar of Tallahassee, who represented Lettman-Hicks. Markus in particular worked to charm the jury, greeting them and opposing counsel each day with a pleasant “good morning.”

‘As much justice as possible is served’

Gillum was still a student at Florida A&M University when he was first elected in 2003 to the City Commission, where he spent years honing his skills as a politician and positioning himself for higher office. In 2014, he easily won the mayor’s race, which he used as a springboard to run for governor a few years later.

He scored an improbable victory in the 2018 Democratic primary against better-funded candidates but lost the general election by fewer than 33,000 votes. Gillum, who would have been Florida’s first Black governor had he won, was criticized for leaving several million dollars of donations on the table that could have put him over the finish line. He later tapped into his political committee, Forward Florida, to help pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills.

Gillum’s political career tanked after an incident in May 2020, when he was found passed out in a Miami Beach hotel room with a male escort. Even some of his closest supporters walked away from him after the scandal broke. Gillum outside the courthouse mentioned friends he’d known “forever” who came to doubt him.

But Winsor’s courtroom was full through much of the trial with family and close friends of the defendants, including Gillum’s wife, mom and sister and Lettman-Hicks’ mom, who watched the whole trial.

“As much justice as possible is served,” Lettman-Hicks said. “Thank God, Andrew Gillum is not guilty. And the rest you know is just theater.”

CHRONICLING THE CASE

Contact Jeff Burlew at [email protected] and follow @JeffBurlew on Twitter.