FBI agents searched the residences and workplaces of Tennessee point out lawmakers, a U.S. attorney’s workplace explained Friday. The searches involved the houses of previous GOP Home Speaker Glen Casada and condition Representative Robin Smith, according to David Boling, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office environment for the Middle District of Tennessee.
CBS affiliate WTVF-Television studies Casada greeted agents at his condominium Friday morning in his bathrobe. An agent was also found posted outside his legislative office environment in Nashville, and other brokers have been observed leaving Smith’s business, according to the station.
Boling declined to present any more data pertaining to the mother nature of the searches and how lots of lawmakers ended up involved.
A spokesman for the FBI referred all concerns to the U.S. attorney’s place of work.
Casada resigned from the prime management post in 2019 just after revelations he exchanged sexually explicit textual content messages about females with his former main of staff members several years in the past. He was reelected to the condition Dwelling final November, WTVF-Television set stories.
AP Photo/Mark Humphrey
Casada did not immediately answer to text messages trying to get comment. Smith did not react to emailed requests for comment.
Republican Governor Monthly bill Lee advised reporters Friday that he had spoken to existing Residence Speaker Cameron Sexton about the lookups, describing them as “FBI raids.”
“It really is surely incredibly relating to. I know extremely minor about that. You will find been no FBI outreach to us,” Lee reported. “But I have confidence that Speaker Sexton is on prime of the condition and we are going to understand a lot more as this unfolds.”
Sexton mentioned in a statement that he was in “entire cooperation” with authorities.
“Considering the fact that starting to be speaker, I have been contacted by federal authorities relating to an ongoing investigation related to the former speaker’s place of work,” Sexton mentioned. “On the information of each Ethics and Lawful Counsel, I am inserting everybody that was subject matter to the execution of present-day lookup warrants on administrative go away right up until even more discover.”
Sexton’s workplace did not instantly answer to follow-up issues with regards to who would be placed on administrative leave.
Other controversies involving Casada included an aide’s cocaine use at a legislative business a long time in the past and allegations of doctoring email messages to frame a youthful Black activist — which Casada and the aide equally denied.
There ended up also promises of vote-obtaining makes an attempt on a critical education and learning voucher invoice, which he has firmly denied.