Kristian "Kris" Hart, a current member of the Amite, La., City Council; and Jerry Trabona, former police chief of Amite City, have pleaded guilty to conspiring to pay and offering to pay voters in Tangipahoa Parish to vote in the 2016 open primary and 2016 open general elections; the U.S. Justice Department said in a recent press release.
Trabona and Hart acknowledged that they made deals to pay or made offers to pay voters during elections in which the defendants were running for office and in which federal candidates were on the same ballot, the release said.
“We must have fair elections, free from the taint of corruption, to ensure a fully functional government," Duane A. Evans, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, said in the release. "Safeguarding the voting process is of paramount importance to our office and the Department of Justice.”
Douglas A. Williams Jr., special agent in charge of the FBI's New Orleans Field Office, noted that providing a person with money or something else of value for voting is a federal crime.
"Today’s guilty pleas send a clear message that individuals like former Amite Chief of Police Jerry Trabona and current Amite City Councilmember Kris Hart, who engaged in voter fraud, will be held accountable," Williams said in the release. "We thank our partners at the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Section and the United States Attorney’s Office Eastern District of Louisiana for helping disrupt voter fraud and continuing to protect the right to vote.”
Sentencing for Hart and Trabona is scheduled for Nov. 1, the release said. They face up to five years in prison for each count.
