NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Beginning the week, the federal government's star witness took the stand against former House Speaker Glen Casada and his aide Cade Cothren in a public corruption trial.
Casada, 65, and Cothren, 38, are charged in a 20-count indictment that accuses them of engaging in a bribery and kickback scheme in conjunction with a deal to provide state-funded constituent mailing services for members of the House Republican Caucus.
On the stand was former State Rep. Robin Smith, who took a deal, pleading guilty to dishonest service fraud, and in turn, is helping prosecutors in order to get a more lenient sentence for herself.
She testified that in October 2019, she first met with Casada and Cothren at a Midtown bar and hatched the idea for Phoenix Solutions — a company to do mail work for politicians.
November 2019 text message from Cothren about using a fake name, Matthew Phoenix, read “using a registered agent is of course what allows us to mask identities.”
The fake name was needed because of Casada and Cothren’s tarnished reputation, from a texting scandal first uncovered by NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
"To do any business with the state, we needed to mask their identities," Smith told the jurors.
Smith also testified that she and Casada would be paid based on how much business each of them brought to their company.
The prosecution would obviously call those payments kickbacks. But the defense claimed Casada and Smith were just being paid for the honest work they did on each project.
It will be up to the jury to decide if concealing identities to obtain this business was illegal or just merely unethical.
Later in the afternoon, Smith testified about a moment that House Speaker Cameron Sexton's acting Chief of Staff, Holt Whitt, caught on that Phoenix Solutions was using similar verbiage as Casada's political consulting company Right Way Consulting. Smith orchestrated a moment where she would go on the Tennessee House Floor and talk to Glen, hoping to show that she was confronting Casada about plagiarism.
She hoped that moment would not let on that Casada, Cothren and Smith were all quietly working together.
What's next?
Tuesday, federal prosecutors will continue questioning former Rep. Smith. Then defense attorneys for Cothren and Casada will get their chance.
That could take up most of Tuesday, but at some point, we're still expecting current House Speaker Cameron Sexton to testify.
Do you have more information about this story? You can email me at chris.davis@newschannel5.com.
My friend and colleague Carrie Sharp had a lot of fun last week, on an adventure to a country more than three thousand miles away! She’s back now – sharing her Adventures in Iceland through stories, and incredible images of this remarkably beautiful and unique island nation (kudos to Chief Photographer Catherine Steward)! But did you know Nashville has something very important in common with Iceland? Tourism! Here, Carrie explains how a volcanic eruption decades ago helped save the country’s economy from collapse!
-Rhori Johnston
