GOP donor Anton Lazzaro sentenced to 21 years for sex trafficking minors in Minnesota

MicroWave@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 596 points – GOP donor Anton Lazzaro sentenced to 21 years for sex trafficking minors in Minnesota
apnews.com

A formerly well-connected GOP donor convicted of giving teenage girls gifts, alcohol and money in exchange for sex was sentenced Wednesday to 21 years in prison on sex trafficking charges.

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What a creepy looking guy. Also, what a creepy attitude:

“I take a lot of offense to the government and court’s notion that I perjured myself in this trial. ... Grooming behavior is the word you used,” he said. “If that’s the case, then I suppose anyone who gives someone a gift, whether it be a cheap gift or a million dollars, is grooming their companion for sex. OK? If that’s the standard that we’re going to apply, then I don’t know how there’s any standard to apply.”

No remorse.

Yes, lets just skip over the minor and sex part of the whole thing.

But his arrest fueled outrage among party activists.

TBF, the sun coming up in the morning fuels outrage among GOP activists.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

They likened Lazzaro to financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested in 2019 on federal charges accusing him of paying underage girls for massages and then abusing them at his homes in Florida and New York.

Lazzaro’s indictment in 2021 touched off a political firestorm that led to the downfall of Jennifer Carnahan as chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota.

Prosecutors argued during his trial that Lazzaro enlisted Castro Medina, who he initially paid for sex, to recruit other teenagers — preferably minors — who were white, small, vulnerable or “broken.” He often sent cars to take the girls to his luxury penthouse condo at the Hotel Ivy in downtown Minneapolis, they said.

Lazzaro also helped run the campaign of Republican Lacy Johnson, who failed to unseat Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, of Minnesota, in 2020.

Several recipients quickly donated those contributions to charity after the charges became public, including U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer, of Minnesota, who received $15,600 but suffered no repercussions.

The government put his net worth in a bond report at more than $2 million but said its calculations didn’t include his “extensive” but hard-to-trace cryptocurrency holdings.

I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Pedocon theory is a theory in the same way the theory of gravity is.

This guy's face is unsettling. His lips are the color of worms that die in a puddle.

Who’s protecting the children from the GOP?

My love for you is like a truck, Lazzaro

Would you like some making f*ck, Lazzaro

My love for you is like a rock, Lazzaro

Don’t suck any dicks on your way to prison!

Hopefully someone sex trafficks his butthole in prison for the next 21 years!

Dude sucks; full stop, but we can do better than prison rape jokes

And I shall go you one further, the fact that a lot of people think that prison rape is some kind of justice is directly linked to the poor recidivism stats we have. (I'm in the UK and would like to see more Nordic style rehabilitation type policies.)

Oh he sucks all right, you can ask BUBBA how much he sucks ;)

In all honesty though, he would probably be killed before raped in prison. PREA is considered a worse violation than murder in today's prisons.

That doesn't sound like the trafficking I think of. Anyone know the legal definition in this case? Still a pos of course but doesn't sound like he's like selling them as sex slaves.. Just statutory prostitutes. In any case, fuck im

He had a recruiter. Underage girls. And all paid for. The case was a federal one, too, and that has impacts.

"Human trafficking, also known as trafficking in persons, is a crime that involves compelling or coercing a person to provide labor or services, or to engage in commercial sex acts."

Seems like this falls under coercing.