A Tennessee state senator has been charged with defrauding $ 600,000 in federal funds to pay for his wedding and finance a lavish lifestyle, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.
From 2015 to 2019, State Senator Katrina Robinson is accused of stealing money that was awarded to The Healthcare Institute, a company she ran, according to prosecutors.
In addition to covering the costs of her wedding, Robinson, a Democrat from a Memphis district elected in 2018, is accused of using the funds to pay for her honeymoon and pay the legal fees for her divorce, the federal charge.
With the money stolen, the legislator also paid for her daughter’s 2016 Jeep Renegade, home improvement, a $ 500 Louis Vuitton handbag and invested in a snow cone business run by her children, prosecutors and the FBI said.
Robinson was charged with theft, embezzlement, and wire fraud.
Despite the charges, he said he will continue to serve in the state legislature “with the same integrity, the same passion that I have demonstrated since he elected me to this position.”
“It is believed that if I was not in the position I am in, if I did not defend the voices, opinions and faces that I represent, I would not be in this moment at this moment,” said Robinson.
The Democratic Caucus of the Tennessee State Senate said in a statement that Robinson’s legislative work “is not in question” and that it “deserves the presumption of innocence and due process.”
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