The defense wants prosecutors to have to play Fortenberry's entire statement to the FBI, not just the parts in which he is accused of lying.

In a blizzard of pretrial briefs Friday, Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s attorneys are seeking to have the congressman’s full statement to the FBI played for jurors — both to show the repetitive questioning of government agents and the idea that Fortenberry was simply confused, rather than lying to agents.

Attorneys for the embattled Fortenberry, 60, also want to call an expert to testify to the fallibility of memory, especially in older adults. And his defense team wants to delve into the purported political leanings of the lead prosecutor.

Prosecutors fired back against all of those motions ahead of a hearing scheduled for Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr. of Los Angeles. They said Fortenberry’s memory expert would offer nothing more than common-sense observations that people already know about recall.

And, they said, insisting that prosecutors play all of Fortenberry’s statements to federal agents — instead of just the operative portions in which they say he lied — invades the U.S. government’s right to present its case how it wants.

Prosecutors also blanched at the defense’s suggestions that lead prosecutor Mack Jenkins may have had political reasons to go after Fortenberry. Prosecutors say such an assertion is nonsense — arguing that Fortenberry is an obscure congressman from Nebraska and noting that the campaign donor in question donated to Democrats and Republicans alike.

The congressman is set to go to trial later this year — no date has been set, although attorneys are looking at mid-March — on charges that he lied to authorities about his knowledge of the source of conduit contributions to his campaign.

The indictment has resulted in Fortenberry, a Republican, now facing multiple GOP challengers, including State Sen. Mike Flood of Norfolk. State Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks of Lincoln is running on the Democratic side, as is Jazari Kual of Lincoln.

Fortenberry, who has represented eastern Nebraska’s 1st District since 2005, is charged with three felonies — two counts of making false statements to federal agents and one count of seeking to conceal the source of $30,000 in “conduit” political contributions from a 2016 California fundraiser.

The money originated with Gilbert Chagoury, a Paris-based Nigerian, who purportedly directed the donations to Fortenberry because of a shared interest in protecting Christians from persecution in the Middle East. It is illegal for foreigners to donate to U.S. political campaigns.

One of the charges grew out of a July 2019 interview in Washington in which Jenkins, an assistant U.S. attorney based in Los Angeles, asked some of the questions posed to Fortenberry.

Prosecutors allege that Fortenberry lied during that interview, and an earlier interview at his Lincoln home, about the origin of the $30,000. They claim that Fortenberry had been informed that the money “probably” came from Chagoury during a 2018 phone call from the organizer of the California fundraiser, who by then was cooperating with the FBI.

Fortenberry and his lawyers, meanwhile, have maintained that the congressman was “set up” by the FBI and that he couldn’t recall details of the 2018 call.

In turn, Fortenberry’s defense team on Friday asked the judge to require the prosecution to play in full Fortenberry’s statement to agents.

“This includes Fortenberry’s statements about the startling timing and manner in which (FBI) Special Agent (Todd) Carter approached him at his home on a Saturday night” and subjected Fortenberry to “confusing and repetitive questions.” The defense said Fortenberry repeatedly explained that he “did not have a clear recollection of the events.”

“You’re forcing my memory,” Fortenberry said at one point.

The defense is also seeking to keep out testimony from two key witnesses for the prosecution. A campaign consultant, Alexandra Kendrick, “relayed to Fortenberry” that the 2016 fundraiser “had the potential for illegal campaign contributions ‘because of the donors’ cultural background,’” according to prosecutors.

The defense also wants to keep out testimony from Toufic Baaklini, a Fortenberry friend and one of the people alleged to have passed the billionaire Chagoury’s money to the Los Angeles donors to Fortenberry.

Fortenberry’s defense team downplayed the congressman’s relationship with Baaklini.

“No member of Congress would plausibly commit a felony to help a mere acquaintance or even a somewhat loosely connected friend,” defense attorney John Littrell wrote.

Prosecutors said Baaklini is central to the case to show that Fortenberry wasn’t confused but was in fact concerned about the source of donations at the fundraiser. They say Baaklini is expected to testify that “approximately one week after the 2016 campaign fundraiser, Fortenberry asked Baaklini if there was anything wrong with the fundraiser because” most of the donations came from members of one family.

The defense also wants to call a professor to testify as to possible reasons Fortenberry told the FBI that he couldn’t recall whether he was told the source of the campaign money. The expert will testify that “memory fidelity and accuracy tend to decline” as we get older.

“Without the benefit of ... expert testimony, jurors may assume that ... Fortenberry must have lied to the government,” Littrell wrote.

The defense also wants to argue that Jenkins, the lead prosecutor, was “resolved to punish” Fortenberry because he thought that Fortenberry had lied to him.

That led to this argument from the defense: “Although Jenkins’ bias against Republicans is explicit, his bias against Congressman Fortenberry may not be. Jenkins may not even be aware of it ... Jenkins has a strong reputation for integrity and may well have believed that every decision he made in this case was driven by an impartial search for the truth. But jurors would be entitled to conclude that Jenkins’ actual or implicit bias influenced his decision-making in this case.”

Prosecutors called that argument absurd. They noted that Chagoury gave to both Republicans and Democrats and said Fortenberry is “not a prominent politician in (California) or otherwise widely known outside of his district.”

“While defendant tries hard to proclaim this case is infected by politics, it is he who keeps injecting it,” prosecutors wrote. “The defendant and his counsel continuously seek to charge his case with politics, make defendant’s political affiliation the focus, and otherwise attack the motives of the prosecution team — none of which are relevant to any legal or factual defense.”