After Jestine Iannotti filed to run for a Central Florida state Senate seat in 2020, she went to great lengths to avoid addressing her candidacy, asking for “privacy” in a press release and leaving the country during campaign season.
But in recent months, Iannotti has broken her silence — taking the witness stand in August to testify that Seminole County GOP Chair Ben Paris asked her to run for office and helping prosecutors convict him of a misdemeanor election law violation.
Earlier that month, Iannotti sat for an interview with state investigators, divulging new details of the origins of her campaign as she seeks to secure a plea agreement in the criminal case against her, according to a transcript of the session that was recently made public.
Among the revelations: Political consultant Eric Foglesong, who helped Iannotti launch her campaign, didn’t hand over to investigators a string of messages he exchanged with Iannotti during a crucial point in the 2020 campaign season, even though his former attorney told law enforcement he had voluntarily provided screenshots of all of the texts he exchanged with her.
Foglesong and Iannotti exchanged 13 messages through an app called Pinger on Aug. 30, 2020, according to documents released by the Seminole-Brevard State Attorney’s Office along with the transcript. The records were first obtained by the Florida Center for Government Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog group.
Iannotti also told investigators that Foglesong identified her Republican opponent in the Central Florida state Senate race, Jason Brodeur, as a contributor to her campaign, the interview transcript shows.
Though Iannotti claimed Foglesong told her Brodeur gave $100 to Iannotti’s campaign, the contribution didn’t appear on the financial reports the candidate and consultant submitted to the state. Prosecutors say the pair falsified those reports, listing the names of two people who had never heard of Iannotti or given money to her campaign and concealing the original source of $1,200 in cash that Foglesong gave to Iannotti to pay her state filing fee.
Brodeur didn’t respond to questions from the Orlando Sentinel about whether he contributed to Iannotti’s campaign. But he likely benefitted from her candidacy, as a political committee linked to Republican operatives sent ads promoting Iannotti as a progressive in an apparent attempt to siphon votes from his Democratic opponent and help him win the election.
Paris, Brodeur’s former employee at the Seminole County Chamber, was found guilty of arranging for his cousin’s name to appear falsely on Iannotti’s campaign contribution forms. Iannotti and Foglesong, who have been charged with felonies, have pleaded not guilty.
Missing messages
It’s not clear why Robert Leventhal, who was representing Foglesong last fall, did not send the Pinger messages to investigators along with other texts exchanged between Iannotti and Foglesong. Leventhal did not respond this week to an email from the Orlando Sentinel about the matter.
Investigators learned of the Pinger messages during an Aug. 1 interview with Iannotti, who spoke voluntarily with Chief Assistant State Attorney Stacey Salmons and FDLE agent Troy Cope. Iannotti said she often used the app with people in the United States while she was in Sweden, where she spent about six weeks during the summer of 2020 and moved shortly after the election.
It’s unclear what Iannotti and Foglesong discussed in those messages. Iannotti told investigators she now uses a different account on the app and doesn’t have access to the messages anymore.
“I’m cut off from that phone number,” Iannotti told investigators, adding she “deleted the text messages a long time ago.”
The State Attorney’s Office subpoenaed Pinger in August and received a log listing the dates and times when messages were sent or received from Iannotti’s account but did not receive the content of the messages, according to spokesperson Todd Brown. The log shows the pair exchanged 13 messages, all on Aug. 30.
Foglesong’s current attorney, Jacob Stuart, didn’t respond to emailed questions from the Sentinel this week about the messages.
If Foglesong withheld messages after his former attorney told investigators he had turned over “screenshots of all text messaging between” the consultant and Iannotti, his legal risk would likely hinge on the content of those messages, said Emily Spottswood, a professor at Florida State University’s College of Law.
If they’re more incriminating than records he handed over voluntarily or there’s evidence the omission was intentional, prosecutors could pursue an obstruction of justice charge, she said.
“I think it would depend on what is the missing information,” Spottswood said, and if it is “of a very different character than what is turned over.”
Iannotti’s interview in August was starkly different from her testimony when she spoke to Salmons and Cope in October 2021, prior to her arrest, and claimed that she had run for office to “try something new” while downplaying the roles of Foglesong and Paris.
In the August interview, Salmons asked if Foglesong had “instructed” Iannotti to testify falsely in her initial statement. Her response was redacted from the transcript released publicly.
Iannotti also said during her 2021 interview that her contributions came in the form of checks, not cash, which investigators later learned was not true. Salmons asked Iannotti if Foglesong had urged her to say, falsely, that she had received checks. Iannotti’s response was redacted from the transcript.
Iannotti: Brodeur on Foglesong’s donor list
Iannotti’s contribution reports, submitted to the state in June 2020, listed only four donors, including Foglesong and two other people who later told investigators they did not actually give money to her campaign. Iannotti told investigators the only funding she received for her campaign came in the form of a $1,200 cash contribution from Foglesong.
But it’s unclear where Foglesong got the money. Just a few months after Iannotti said he handed her an envelope filled with cash that she deposited into her bank account, he started falling behind on rental payments for his family’s home in Maitland.
Iannotti told investigators that while she and Foglesong were filling out her financial reports, she suggested they should indicate she funded her own campaign. But Foglesong told her that doing so would “look suspicious” because her financial disclosure forms showed she had less than $2,400 in income during 2019, she recalled.
Iannotti said Foglesong told her he would “get some donors” and then sent her a photo of roughly 10 men’s names listed with contribution amounts. Jason Brodeur was among those names, she said.
Iannotti said she didn’t know who Brodeur was, but the name stuck out to her because “someone very close and personal” to her also is named Jason.
Salmons asked Iannotti whether she is sure she remembers seeing the name “Jason Brodeur” or just “Jason” on the list.
“I’m not 100% sure,” Iannotti responded. “But to the extent, I would say it was him.”
Salmons asked Iannotti if she questioned why one of her opponents would contribute $100 to her campaign., but her answer is redacted from the transcript.
Iannotti is not the first person interviewed in the case to tie Brodeur to the “ghost” candidate scheme. Former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg told Salmons and Cope in June that Brodeur “absolutely” knew about a plan to recruit a spoiler candidate in his 2020 race.
“Brodeur was there, present in the conversation, just like he’d be sitting around this table,” said Greenberg, who is awaiting sentencing on federal charges including sex trafficking, in a jailhouse interview.
Iannotti also told investigators she was not paid or given any other type of benefit to run.
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Skyler Swisher of the Sentinel staff contributed.
