Midwest
Former GOP Rep. Fortenberry charged with lying about illegal campaign contribution
Former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry has been charged with lying to federal authorities about a foreign billionaire’s illegal $30,000 contribution to his campaign, reviving a case that was derailed by an appellate court.
A federal jury convicted the Nebraska Republican in 2022, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Fortenberry’s conviction last year, ruling that the case should not have been tried in Los Angeles.
A grand jury in the nation’s capital indicted Fortenberry on Wednesday on two counts: falsifying and concealing material facts and making false statements.
COURT REVERSES FORMER NEBRASKA US REP. JEFF FORTENBERRY’S CONVICTION FOR LYING TO FEDERAL AUTHORITIES
Chad Kolton, a spokesman for Fortenberry, said the case should not have been brought in the first place and should not be pursued again after the 9th Circuit ruled in his favor.
“This case has defined overzealous prosecution from the earliest days of the investigation, and retrying it in D.C. just highlights the prosecutors’ vindictive obsession with destroying a good man’s life,” Kolton said in a statement.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., arrives at the federal courthouse in Los Angeles, Wednesday, March 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
After his conviction, Fortenberry announced his resignation from the office that he had held since 2005. He had been under pressure from congressional leaders and Nebraska’s Republican governor.
The case stems an FBI investigation of illegal campaign contributions made by Gilbert Chagoury, a Nigerian billionaire who lived in Paris at the time. Chagoury made the $30,000 contribution to Fortenberry through middlemen at a 2016 fundraiser in Los Angeles, his indictment says.
Chagoury later agreed to pay a $1.8 million fine. Foreign nationals are prohibited from directly contributing money to candidates for federal offices in the United States.
Fortenberry was charged after denying to the FBI that he was aware he had received illicit funds from Chagoury. A person who cooperated with the FBI investigation repeatedly told Fortenberry about the illegal contributions, his indictment says.
The 9th Circuit ruled that Fortenberry was improperly tried in Los Angeles because he was charged in connection with statements that he made to federal agents at his home in Lincoln, Nebraska, and at his lawyer’s office in Washington.
Fortenberry’s trial was the first for a sitting member of Congress since Rep. Jim Traficant, D-Ohio, who was convicted of bribery and other felony charges in 2002.
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BLOOMINGTON — Indiana football’s roster is on more equal footing with Miami, even though the star rankings have meant little to the final results in this year’s CFP.
The No. 1 Hoosiers (15-0) beat Alabama and Oregon by a combined score of 94-25 despite having no former 5-star players in the starting lineup and just one former top 100 recruit.
The No. 10 Hurricanes (13-2) will have a pair of former 5-star recruits in their starting lineup but are only starting a total of three former top-100 prospects. It’s a sharp drop off in top talent from the likes of Alabama (14), Ohio State (10) and Oregon (eight).
| Category | Indiana | Miami | Oregon | Ohio State | Alabama |
| 5-stars | 0 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 9 |
| 4-stars | 2 | 7 | 11 | 16 | 9 |
| Top 100 recruits | 1 | 3 | 8 | 10 | 14 |
| 2-stars or below | 9 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
Indiana’s starting lineup still leads the way in overlooked recruits — it will start nine players that ranked 2-stars or below, including starting quarterback Fernando Mendoza — but Miami almost has more (four) than IU’s past three opponents combined (five).
The Hurricanes also has a more of a transfer laden starting lineup (11) than any of Indiana’s postseason opponents.
Here’s a position-by-position breakdown of the recruiting rankings for this year’s participants in the CFP championship game:
Re-live IU’s 2025 season
Indiana football’s quarterbacks vs. Miami
| Position | Indiana (Year) | Rating (National rank) | Miami (Year) | Rating (National rank) |
| Quarterback | Fernando Mendoza (2022) | 2-stars (No. 2,149) | Carson Beck (2020) | 4-stars (No. 254) |
Indiana football’s skill positions vs. Miami
| Position | Indiana (Year) | Rating (National rank) | Miami (Year) | Rating (National rank) |
| Wide receiver | Elijah Sarratt (2022) | 0-stars (N/A) | Malachi Toney (2025) | 4-stars (No. 359) |
| Wide receiver | Omar Cooper Jr. (2022) | 4-stars (No. 299) | Keelan Marion | 2-stars (No. 3,390) |
| Wide receiver | E.J. Williams Jr. (2020) | 4-stars (No. 69) | CJ Daniels (2020) | 3-stars (No. 2,450) |
| Running back | Roman Hemby (2021) | 3-stars (No. 1,767) | Mark Fletcher Jr. (2023) | 4-stars (No. 149) |
| Tight end | Riley Nowakowski (2020) | 0-stars (N/A) | Alex Bauman (2022) | 3-stars (No. 1,770) |
Indiana football’s offensive line vs Miami
| Position | Indiana (Year) | Rating (National rank) | Miami (Year) | Rating (National rank) |
| Left tackle | Carter Smith (2022) | 3-stars (No. 730) | Markel Bell (2022) | N/A |
| Left guard | Drew Evans (2022) | 0-stars (N/A) | Matthew McCoy (2022) | 3-stars (No. 735) |
| Center | Pat Coogan (2021) | 3-stars (No. 613) | James Brockermeyer (2021) | 4-stars (No. 194) |
| Right guard | Bray Lynch (2022) | 3-stars (No. 1,033) | Anez Cooper (2022) | 3-stars (No. 1,149) |
| Right tackle | Kahlil Benson (2020) | 3-stars (No. 714) | Francis Mauigoa (2023) | 5-stars (No. 9) |
Indiana football’s defensive line vs. Miami
| Position | Indiana (Year) | Rating (National rank) | Miami (Year) | Rating (National rank) |
| Defensive tackle | Mario Landino (2024) | 3-stars (No. 2,398) | Ahmad Moten Sr. (2022) | 3-stars (No. 558) |
| Defensive tackle | Tyrique Tucker (2022) | 0-stars (N/A) | Justin Scott (2024) | 5-stars (No. 10) |
| Defensive end | Mikail Kamara (2020) | 0-stars (N/A) | Rueben Bain (2023) | 4-stars (No. 62) |
| Defensive end | Stephen Daley (2022) | 3-stars (No. 1,987) | Akheem Mesidor (2020) | 3-stars (No. 636) |
Indiana football’s linebackers vs. Miami
| Position | Indiana (Year) | Rating (National rank) | Miami (Year) | Rating (National rank) |
| Linebacker | Aiden Fisher (2022) | 0-stars (N/A) | Wesley Bissainthe (2022) | 4-stars (188) |
| Linebacker | Rolijah Hardy (2023) | 0-stars (N/A) | Mohamed Toure (2019) | 3-stars (No. 1,024) |
Indiana football’s secondary vs. Miami
| Position | Indiana (Year) | Rating (National rank) | Miami (Year) | Rating (National rank) |
| Cornerback | D’Angelo Ponds (2023) | 3-stars (No. 1,966) | OJ Frederique Jr. (2024) | 3-stars (No. 784) |
| Cornerback | Jamari Sharpe (2022) | 3-stars (No. 826) | Ethan O’Conner (2023) | 3-stars (No. 673) |
| Safety | Louis Moore (2020) | 0-stars (N/A) | Zechariah Poyser (2023) | N/A |
| Safety | Amare Ferrell (2022) | 3-stars (No. 578) | Jakobe Thomas (2021) | 3-stars (No. 2,048) |
| Rover | Devan Boykin (2020) | 3-stars (No. 833) | Keionte Scott (2020) | N/A |
Michael Niziolek is the Indiana beat reporter for The Bloomington Herald-Times. You can follow him on X @michaelniziolek and read all his coverage by clicking here.
In five of six legislative special elections last year, Democrats overperformed by more than 20 percentage points compared with the 2024 presidential election.
Here are the top 2026 midterm races to follow in Iowa
Des Moines Register Chief Politics Reporter Brianne Pfannenstiel breaks down Iowa’s top races ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Iowa Democrats ended 2025 on a high note, winning a Dec. 30 special election in Des Moines’ western suburbs by a wider margin than during the presidential election.
That capped off a year in which Democrats won four of the six legislative special elections and ended Republicans’ supermajority in the Iowa Senate.
In five of those six special elections, Democrats overperformed by more than 20 percentage points compared with 2024.
They’ll look to build off the momentum going into the pivotal 2026 midterms that will include open races for governor and U.S. senator as well as regular Iowa congressional and Legislature elections.
Whether 2025’s Democratic Party victories are bellwethers or blips will play out this year.
Democrats saw Iowa special elections consistently tilt left
Though Republicans won in two special elections in 2025s, their margins of victory were significantly smaller than 2024.
Republican Wendy Larson won December’s special election for the vacant seat in House District 7 by 40 points. That’s a wide margin, but wide margins are expected for Republicans in that part of the state: The party holds strong advantages in voter registration totals in Calhoun, Pocahontas, Sac and Webster counties, where the district is located.
And even that 40-point margin represented a shift toward the Democrats.
In the 2024 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Kamala Harris by 50 points in House District 7. Democrats didn’t even field a candidate for the district’s legislative seat that year.
The 10-point shift toward Democrats from the 2024 presidential election to the 2025 special election in House District 7 was the smallest of any legislative district that held a special election last year.
Each of the five other districts shifted toward Democrats by more than twice as much.
Moreover, those special elections were spread across the state.
Democrats consistently gathered a greater share of votes from Senate District 1 in the northwest part of the state to House District 100 in the state’s southeast corner, ranging from 10 to 26 percentage points.
The two seats Democrats flipped in special elections — Senate Districts 1 and 35 — each shifted to the left by more than 20 points compared with the 2024 presidential election.
In Senate District 1, Trump outpaced Harris by 11 percentage points in 2024, while Democrat Caitlin Drey won the seat there by more than 10 points in August.
In Senate District 35, Trump’s victory margin in Senate District 35 was more than 21 points. In January 2025, Democrat Mike Zimmer won the district’s Senate seat by 3½ points.
In 2022, Republicans won both those seats by even wider margins than Trump in 2024.
Should Democrats expect momentum to carry over to 2026?
Pushing voters to the left in six isolated special elections is one thing. Parlaying those successes into November’s midterm elections is quite another.
Turnout was key in 2025’s special elections, and it will be again in 2026.
The numbers of votes cast in 2025’s special elections equaled roughly one-quarter to one-third the votes cast in the 2024 presidential election in those districts.
Turnout should be higher in November’s midterms.
Since 2000, the percentage of Iowa’s registered voters who have participated in the midterm elections typically has hovered around 55%. (About 75% of registered Iowans usually vote in presidential elections.)
But what determines an election is less about the number of people who show up and more about who those people are.
An increased share of those who went to the polls in the special elections were Democratic voters — or, perhaps more accurately, a greater number of Republican voters stayed home.
Republicans will be working to get those voters back to the polls this November.
Republicans maintain advantage in Iowa voter registration data
The leftward shift in last year’s special elections has yet to materialize in Iowa’s voter registration numbers.
Over roughly the past 15 years, voter registrations in Iowa have swung heavily toward Republicans.
Democrats, conversely, have lost 200,000 voters in that time, and Republicans have opened up an overall advantage of more than 10 percentage points.
Despite their victories at the ballot box in 2025, Democrats have not chipped into Republicans’ significant lead in voter registrations.
Last year was the first since at least 2000 when the share of active voters who were Republicans was at least 10 percentage points higher than the share who were Democrats throughout the entire year.
Republicans began 2026 with nearly 200,000 more active registered voters than Democrats, among their largest leads this century.
Those two parties do not comprise the entirety of Iowa’s electorate — a large share of Iowa’s active voters are not registered to a party, and a smaller amount are registered to other parties, including Libertarians.
And just because a voter is registered as a Democrat or Republican doesn’t mean they’ll vote for their party’s candidates.
But the large voter deficit indicates Democrats are starting from a less favorable position.
Their special election victories in 2025 proved they can win elections, but they’ll need to make up some ground to replicate that success in 2026.
Tim Webber is a data visualization specialist for the Register. Reach him at twebber@registermedia.com and on Twitter at @HelloTimWebber.
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