With allegations of jury tampering, the Feeding Our Future trial has at a minimum been bizarre, and at worst could be in jeopardy.
With two jurors dismissed in the case, and an investigation into attempted bribery, retired Hennepin County Judge Kevin Burke calls the case, baffling and compared it to a famous case decades ago.
"The most famous case of bribery was Jimmy Hoffa, the former president of the Teamsters, who was charged and convicted of attempting to bribe a grand jury decades ago," explained Burke and referencing one of the most famous names of the 20th century.
In March of 1964, Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering and sentenced to eight years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Burke says he has sympathy for Judge Nancy Brasel who is presiding over the trial.
"She really has no one to turn to as to what do you do if there's been an attempt to bribe a jury," asks Burke. "I'm as baffled as everybody who's listening to WCCO about how did this happen and how it will unfold."
There was several weeks of testimony already, and Burke says that makes the decision to declare a mistrial difficult despite the issues with the jury.
"I think the trial lasted something like seven weeks or something like that," Burke told WCCO Radio. "If it is a two day trial, it'd be pretty easy to say, 'well, let's do it all over again.' It gets more difficult in the case of that length. There really is no roadmap for how to deal with this kind of jury tampering."
The jury is still deliberating as of Thursday morning despite the two jurors being dismissed. The first juror was dismissed Monday after reporting a woman showed up at her home in Spring Lake Park with $120,000 in cash promising more if the juror would acquit the seven defendants.
The second juror admitted to knowing about the attempted bribe which forced the judge to dismiss them from the trial.
The jury has now been sequestered since Monday, a rare move by the judge. Phones were also confiscated from the jurors and defendants.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Star Tribune reports the FBI raided a Savage home of one of the defendants, Abdiaziz Shafii Farah. The other six defendants in the case are Mohamed Jama Ismail, Abdimajid Mohamed Nur, Abdiwahab Maalim Aftin, Mukhtar Mohamed Shariff and Hayat Mohamed Nur. All were charged in 2022 with wire fraud, money laundering and other charges in the largest COVID-relief fraud case in the country.
The seven will be the first of 70 defendants to go on trial in the alleged scam. Eighteen others have already pleaded guilty.
Prosecutors have said the seven collectively stole over $40 million in a conspiracy that cost taxpayers $250 million — one of the largest pandemic-related fraud cases in the country. Federal authorities say they have recovered about $50 million.