Editor’s notebook: A failure of justice as a convicted Tennessee lawmaker skates free

Glen Casada, pictured with his legal team and his wife on the first day of his April 2025 trial on corruption charges, got a pardon from President Donald Trump after Casada’s conviction and sentencing. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

The Fred D. Thompson Federal Courthouse in downtown Nashville has been the scene of two high profile trials in 2025 with distinctly different outcomes.

During a four-week period in April and May, jurors heard arguments in the corruption trials of former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada and his one-time chief of staff, Cade Cothren. 

The two were found guilty of fraud, bribery, theft, conspiracy and money laundering for their roles in creating a fake political consulting firm that they used to gain business from state lawmakers under fraudulent terms. 

After none of his former colleagues testified on his behalf, Casada was sentenced to three years in federal prison and a $30,000 fine, which seems to me like a pretty light sentence for betraying the public trust. 

In June, weeks after the Casada-Cothren trial ended, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, was hauled into the same courthouse to be tried for “conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain.”

Contrast the disparate treatments the two face: Casada, who, as prosecutors pointed out, never expressed an ounce of regret for deceiving his colleagues — some of whom he had worked with for nearly two decades — gets to skate with a Nov. 6 pardon from President Donald Trump, no doubt thanks to a call to Trump from a powerful mutual friend. 

Abrego Garcia, originally from Venezuela, came to the U.S. without legal permission at age 16 in 2011 but was granted protection from deportation in 2019 due to the danger he would face from gang violence should he return.  

Now, the married father remains not only in custody but in a dreadful legal limbo, continuing to face what appear to be — no pun intended — trumped-up human smuggling charges that federal prosecutors say are tied to a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop, charges which were only filed by the government in April, after he’d been erroneously deported. 

One can argue about the appropriateness of Abrego Garcia’s move to the U.S. without following legal channels, although I find it reasonable a 16-year-old might want to escape gang violence in his home country. But what’s not arguable is the injustice in him continuing to be prosecuted for a mistake Trump officials made in deporting him against court orders. 

Supporters of Casada and Cothren, who forged a fake name on an IRS document to form their business, claim the pair were unjustly targeted out of political motivations. 

Politico quoted an anonymous White House official accusing federal law enforcement of being too hard on the Tennessee twosome. 

“The Biden Department of Justice significantly over-prosecuted these individuals for a minor issue involving constituent mailers — which were billed at competitive prices, never received a complaint from legislators, and resulted in a net profit loss of less than $5,000,” the official said in a statement. “The Biden DOJ responded with an armed raid, perp walk, and suggested sentences exceeding 10 years — penalties normally reserved for multimillion dollar fraudsters.”

There’s a lot wrong with this statement, starting with the fact that the investigation into Phoenix Solutions and Casada — and a subsequent raid of he and Cothren’s offices and homes — came in Trump’s first term.

And while the pair did indeed see little in financial profits, the money isn’t the point. 

Glen Casada: The rise and fall of a House Speaker

Casada started the fake Phoenix Solutions only after being bounced as speaker of the House by legislators who had elected him to the role only eight months earlier, members of the Republican House Caucus who gave him a ‘no confidence’ vote. 

He earned their scorn for his heavy-handed leadership once elevated to speaker, spending funds to renovate his office, including installing white noise machines, paying Cothren nearly $200,000 annually and allowing Cothren to eavesdrop on meetings, hiring additional staff as “hall monitors” to keep tabs on Republican caucus members and keeping “bill kill” lists targeting legislation sponsored by House members from both parties. 

In 2020, after being stripped of his House speaker role, the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance — a bipartisan board — fined Casada $10,500 after an audit revealed he had failed to provide receipts for nearly $100,000 in expenditures for his political action committee.  

With Casada, corruption is not a bug but a feature. He hasn’t faced injustice: he’s faced no justice for his wanton misuse of public office.

Criminal justice advocates often speak of a two-tiered justice system in the U.S., but I argue differently. The justice system isn’t two-tiered: simply put, a comparison of these two cases shows the justice system is currently dead. 

When Casada, the man who once held the third-highest position of power in Tennessee, a man who held public office for more than 20 years, gets off with a get-out-of-jail-free pass and zero accountability, no other conclusion is suitable.