Convictions in FBI Sting of Politician Should Be Thrown Out, Legal Scholar Says

An Ohio politician who was ensnared in an FBI “sting” wants his two corruption-related convictions thrown out—a challenge that ought to prevail, says a legal scholar who has followed the case closely.

Lawyers for Alexander “P.G.” Sittenfeld, a former Cincinnati city councilman who was convicted of bribery and attempted extortion this summer, filed motions for acquittal and a new trial on Sept. 30 in the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati.

Ken Katkin, professor of law at Northern Kentucky University. (Courtesy of Northern Kentucky University Chase School of Law)

While such post-trial motions are common, they rarely succeed. But Ken Katkin, a professor of law at Northern Kentucky University near Cincinnati, opined that Sittenfeld’s main argument is valid.

“I don’t think there was any crime here at all,” Katkin told The Epoch Times, predicting that Sittenfeld will eventually win a reversal. He thinks the prosecution of Sittenfeld was an “overreach,” resulting from the FBI’s making corruption cases a top priority.

Federal prosecutors didn’t immediately respond to a reporter’s emails requesting comment.

Controversies Followed Verdict

The latest actions in the case came days after a federal appeals court refused to allow Sittenfeld’s lawyers to dig into the cellphone of “Juror X,” who had repeatedly posted on Facebook about her jury experience during Sittenfeld’s trial.

After questioning Juror X and three other jurors, judges ruled they found no evidence that her actions tainted the verdict, so no further invasion of her privacy was warranted.

Although jurors convicted Sittenfeld on two federal charges in July, they acquitted him of four similar counts—a sign of the jury’s “obvious confusion” because the allegations related to the same patterns of conduct, his attorneys wrote.

Bogus Developers

Events leading to Sittenfeld’s prosecution began in 2018. Undercover FBI agents, posing as would-be real-estate developers, approached Sittenfeld and began discussing

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