The sentencing hearing for former Rep. Tyrone Books began Monday with an explanation of how the federal investigation started and ended with the civil rights leader pleading guilty to tax evasion and no contest to five counts of mail or wire fraud.
Since Brooks entered pleas in April, avoiding a trial, the sentencing is the first public airing of the evidence federal prosecutors had against him. Testimony could take most of this week.
FBI agent Christie Parker testified that it all began with a call from an official at Citizens Bank. The banker had noticed unusual deposits and transfers between the account for a charity — Universal Humanities — to an account entitled Tyrone Brooks Headquarters.
Brooks had told donors like Coca-Cola Co., Georgia Power and Georgia Pacific that he had founded Universal Humanities to address illiteracy in Georgia. He told those companies that their donations would pay for books, teachers, workshops and other efforts to improve literacy, first, in a few counties but eventually over several states.
Lawyers for the one-time Atlanta Democrat representative are asking U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg to sentence Brooks to probation in light of the decades of work he has done for civil rights, starting when he was 15 and joined the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s team.
Prosecutors, however, are pushing for two years in prison for soliciting almost $1 million over at least 15 years from major corporations and a labor union for a sham charity or for the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials and then using those funds to pay personal expenses.
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