Timeline: How Andrew Gillum got mixed up in an FBI corruption investigation that fizzled
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Below is a timeline of the FBI's investigation into public corruption in the city of Tallahassee and the events since.
2015 & 2016: The FBI begins an investigation
August 2015: An undercover FBI agent posing as developer Mike Miller attends an annual chamber conference in Sandestin. He and at least two other agents spend the next year and a half hobnobbing with local business and political leaders.
May 2016: Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum and his wife vacation with Edison restaurant investors Sean Pittman and Adam Corey in Costa Rica. During the vacation, Corey sends Gillum a calendar invite to meet with Miller back in Tallahassee. Corey, who also worked as a lobbyist, initially became friends with Gillum back in college. Gillum's chief of staff says the mayor paid cash for the trip; Corey would later say he did not.
August 2016: Miller and another undercover agent go on outings with Gillum and Adam Corey in New York City. The visit included watching a performance of "Hamilton." Photographs of the outings, which included a boat ride in New York Harbor, surface in 2017 and 2018.
Sometime in 2016: Miller and two other undercover agents are photographed with City Commissioner Scott Maddox and local entrepreneur J.T. Burnette in a Las Vegas hotel room. The exact date of the photo, which surfaced in 2017, is unknown.
2017: FBI serves subpoenas
Early 2017: Miller and the other undercover agents “disappear” from Tallahassee. Websites for their front businesses are later taken offline.
March 1, 2017: Andrew Gillum announces he'll run for governor in 2018.
April 2017: FBI agent Josh Doyle discusses details of an undercover FBI operation during a job interview with his future employer, the Florida Bar. He describes a major, two-year probe with a $500,000 budget that used a team of 20, including undercover agents and forensic analysts. An article with references to the investigation, which would years later be revealed as Operation Capital Currency, is published in the Florida Bar News in early June.
June 13, 2017: The FBI serves subpoenas on City Hall and the Community Redevelopment Agency demanding records involving local business people and their interactions with city officials and staff.
June 23, 2017: Gillum releases a statement saying he met with FBI agents the preceding week about its investigation and pledged to cooperate. He said the FBI told him he was not a “focus” of its probe.
June 30, 2017: Tallahassee Democrat reveals details of Scott Maddox's real estate transactions that intersect with FBI investigation.
July 2017: City officials say they will deliver some 90,000 pages of documents to the FBI as part of its investigation into local redevelopment deals.
August 21, 2017: Corey cancels his lobbying registration with the state.
August 17, 2017: Gillum acknowledges trip to New York City with Miller and Corey after photos of the trip are released. Gillum says the trip was not for business and city funds didn't pay for it.
Sept. 6, 2017: A third subpoena is served on City Hall, demanding communications involving Maddox and a number of his current and former aides and associates, including Downtown Improvement Authority Executive Director Paige Carter-Smith.
2018: An ethics complaint and corruption charges
January 2018: Gillum, in an interview with the Tallahassee Democrat, asserts that 20 or more subpoenas have nothing to with him. He also discusses cutting ties with Adam Corey after details of the investigation came to light.
Jan. 22, 2018: Corey puts his home and office on the market for $1.3 million.
February 2018: Search warrant detailing the case against Scott Maddox and Paige Carter-Smith is accidentally released and quickly sealed.
February 12, 2018: Maddox denies allegations, vows he won't resign from office.
May 2018: New FBI subpoena served on city seeks more records about the Edison and correspondence with developer Adam Corey.
June 14, 2018: Local businessman Erwin Jackson files a state ethics complaint against Gillum over 2016 trip to Costa Rica with Corey and Pittman.
August 28, 2018: Gillum wins Florida Democratic primary for governor, becoming Florida’s first African-American to be the gubernatorial nominee of a major party.
September 4, 2018: Gillum releases travel receipts for trips he took to New York City and Costa Rica that are under investigation by the Florida Commission on Ethics.
October 23, 2018: Adam Corey, Chris Kise release documents days before Gillum and Republican nominee for governor Ron DeSantis debate. Documents show undercover FBI agents arranged for tickets to "Hamilton" in New York City in 2016.
October 26, 2018: Undercover FBI agent is revealed to have paid for food, drinks for 2016 fundraiser for Gillum's PAC.
October 31: In a Q&A with the USA TODAY NETWORK - Florida editors around the state, Gillum opens up about his relationship with Miller and how it came to a decisive end. "You won’t find me making that kind of mistake again," he says, adding he needs to be more careful about who he trusts.
Nov. 6, 2018: Gillum loses bid for governor on Election Day. Calls for recount of votes follows days later.
Nov. 17, 2018: After recount shows margins in DeSantis' favor, Gillum officially concedes governor's race.
Dec. 11, 2018: The FBI indicts Scott Maddox and Paige Carter-Smith on public corruption charges. The two plead not guilty to the 44 charges in federal court.
2019: Gillum settles ethics case as J.T. Burnette is charged and Maddox takes a plea deal
Jan. 25, 2019: Florida Ethics Commission finds probable cause in complaint against Gillum.
April 24, 2019: Gillum decides to settle the state ethics complaint on the day his administrative trial was set to begin. As part of the settlement, Gillum agreed that he accepted gift(s) from a lobbyist over $100 and later paid a $5,000 fine.
May 9, 2019: A federal grand jury hands up a superseding indictment in the Maddox case, charging a third defendant, local developer John “J.T.” Burnette, with bribery-related offenses.
Aug. 6, 2019: Maddox and Carter-Smith plead guilty to charges of conspiracy and wire fraud. As part of a deal with federal prosecutors, all but three counts in the indictment were dropped. Maddox and Carter-Smith also agree to cooperate with prosecutors.
2020: Gillum goes to rehab after hotel shocker
March 30, 2020: Gillum is found passed out in a Miami Beach hotel room with a male escort and another person. No one was charged, but the incident made international headlines and prompted Gillum to go to rehab for an alcohol problem. Although methamphetamine was found in the hotel room, Gillum said he didn’t use drugs.
July 2020: Gillum returns to public view with an 11-minute video on Instagram. He said he went into therapy to deal with the issues he was facing, and the depression he sunk into after narrowly losing the 2018 governor's race to Republican Ron DeSantis. "I had totally underestimated what losing the race for governor had had on my life and on the way those impacts started to show up in every aspect of my life," he said.
2021: Prosecutors notch another win in Operation Capital Currency.
Aug. 13, 2021: After more than a 3-week trial, jurors find Burnette guilty on five counts and not guilty on four others. He was accused of giving Maddox a $100,000 bribe in 2014 in exchange for his help in spiking a rival downtown hotel project and arranging $40,000 in bribes in late 2016 and early 2017 to Maddox from undercover FBI agents posing as developers and other wealthy businessmen.
Sept. 9, 2021: U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle sentences Maddox to five years in prison and Carter-Smith to two years.
'I let all those lines cross': Scott Maddox on his descent from public service to bribery
Nov. 9, 2021: Judge Hinkle sentences Burnette to three years in federal prison.
2022: A bombshell development and a new front in the corruption case
June 7, 2022: Gillum and his longtime mentor Sharon Lettman-Hicks are charged in a 21-count indictment stemming from alleged misuse of campaign funds. The sealed indictment didn’t become public until June 22, when it was unsealed and the two were arrested. Both pleaded not guilty. The charges were nearing the statute of limitations.
2023: A corruption case, mistrial and acquittal lead to dropped charges
April 11, 2023: A federal grand jury hands up a superseding indictment in the case with two fewer wire fraud count than what appeared in the initial indictment.
April 17, 2023: Jury selection begins in the public corruption trial of Gillum and Lettman-Hicks. Testimony and arguments unfold over next nine days.
April 28, 2023: The government and defense present closing arguments.
Chronicling the case:
Day 1: Jury selected, possible witnesses and an appeal to raise $1M
Day 2 opening arguments: Money as a motive or forcing the evidence?
Day 3: How agents confronted mayor at Cascades; Adam Corey's moment
Day 4: Why the feds delayed charging Andrew Gillum and the money trail
Day 5: Prosecutors trace money trail from 'urgent request' for $250K
Day 7: Campaign operatives testify they weren't aware of P&P get-out-the-vote efforts
Day 8: Feds home in on 'Hamilton' ticket disconnect, 'abnormal' money trail
Day 9: Prosecutors and defense rest; former mayor opts not to testify
Day 10: Jury wraps deliberations for the day as closings paint dueling portraits of Andrew Gillum
Decoding the indictment ABCs: Guide to the people, organizations in Andrew Gillum trial
May 4, 2023: In a stunning defeat for the government, jurors acquit Gillum on charges that he lied to the FBI about a “Hamilton” ticket and other gifts he took from undercover FBI agents in New York. After five days of deliberating, they deadlocked, however, on the most serious charges against Gillum, Florida's Democratic nominee for governor in 2018, and his co-defendant, Sharon Lettman-Hicks, involving the misuse of campaign funds.
May 9, 2023: Several jurors tell the Tallahassee Democrat in an exclusive interview they were “heartbroken” that they couldn’t reach a verdict on most of the charges and that the former Tallahassee mayor would have been acquitted fully were it not for two holdouts they described as “biased.” The jurors, who wrote the letter, also took the extraordinary step of urging prosecutors not to retry the case.
May 15, 2023: After signaling they planned to move ahead with a retrial, federal prosecutors reverse course and move to dismiss charges against Gillum. His attorneys say "Andrew has endured a lot over the past few years and now can resume his life and public service.”
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Andrew Gillum timeline: From FBI probe to Florida governor loss to verdict
