NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The U.S. Department of Justice appears to be preparing to drop a nearly two-year criminal investigation of Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles, agreeing to return or destroy evidence seized from the diehard MAGA Republican before the FBI ever got a chance to review it.
That criminal investigation had focused on potential fraud involving campaign finance reports filed by the Maury County Republican during his first run for Congress in 2022.
Ogles' legal team filed a motion Tuesday to drop its long-pending emergency motion that had kept the FBI from reviewing evidence from Ogle's phone and personal email.
"In discussions with the Office of the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice, the Government has advised defense counsel that it will promptly return or destroy the property obtained pursuant to the respective search warrants at issue," the motion read.
"The emergency motions filed by Congressman Ogles in these matters are therefore moot."
The new filing came on a news-packed day as Tennessee lawmakers were convening for a special session to redraw congressional districts to put the state under complete Republican control. As part of that redistricting process, the GOP is expected to attempt to insulate Ogles from what had been expected to be a serious Democratic challenge.
At the heart of motions by Ogles' legal team was the argument that the FBI, as part of the executive branch, should not be allowed to look at the personal communications of a sitting member of the legislative branch.
“This is a complete win for the responsible exercise of prosecutorial discretion and respect for the Constitution’s Separation of Powers,” Ogles said in a written statement.
“From the day the FBI showed up, I said this investigation should never have happened and that the Biden DOJ had no right to rummage through a sitting congressman’s legislative communications. Today, the Justice Department has effectively acknowledged I was right."
Ogles' lead defense attorney Alex Little also celebrated the DOJ decision.
"There’s a hard constitutional line around investigations of sitting members of Congress, and this case shows why that line exists," Little said in his own written statement.
As NewsChannel 5 Investigates first revealed, FBI agents served a search warrant on Ogles in August 2024 to confiscate his personal cell phone. It was later revealed in a court filing that, a month earlier, the FBI had obtained a warrant to seize the congressman’s personal email records from Google.
Ogles’ legal team quickly filed an emergency motion to block agents from looking at the evidence, making the separation-of-powers argument. Prosecutors agreed not to examine data from the phone or email, pending a ruling from U.S. Magistrate Alistair E. Newbern.
Then, in January 2025, shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville withdrew from the case. They indicated future matters would be handled by attorneys in the DOJ's public integrity section in D.C.
That division was decimated by cuts made by the incoming administration.
Last December, Magistrate Newbern asked new U.S. Attorney Braden H. Boucek to inform the court whether prosecutors still intended to pursue the investigation of Ogles. Boucek replied that “the parties have been awaiting a ruling … for more than 14 months.”
Newbern left the bench in early January without ever ruling. She never explained the delay, and it is not clear what may have transpired behind the scenes since then.
Ogles, however, appears to remain under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.
According to public filings, that investigation focuses on campaign reports filed by Ogles in 2022 claiming he had personally loaned his campaign $320,000 of his own money—a claim he later admitted was false following an exclusive NewsChannel 5 investigation.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates first uncovered evidence that Ogles did not appear to have the financial resources to make such a loan. His personal financial disclosures filed with the U.S. House did not indicate that he even had a savings account.
The Maury County Republican later filed amended campaign reports declaring that he had only loaned his campaign $20,000. He claimed that he had “mistakenly” included the amount of money that he was prepared to spend if necessary.
In January 2025, the House Ethics Committee announced the findings of a preliminary investigation that confirmed NewsChannel 5’s questions. In that report, Ogles’ treasurer speculated that the GOP candidate may have misrepresented the amount of money he had available to make his campaign look stronger in order to “buy the primary.”
Similar allegations led to the indictment of New York Congressman George Santos on federal fraud charges, leading to his eventual guilty plea and resignation.
The preliminary ethics report also indicated that Ogles refused to cooperate with the investigation, as did a number of close associates, and it recommended that they be subpoenaed and forced to testify or provide relevant records to the committee.
The Ethics Committee has not provided any update on its investigation since that release more than a year ago.
As the investigation was pending, Ogles repeatedly appeared to be attempting to curry favor with President Trump, introducing legislation to allow the MAGA leader to seek a third term, to allow the president to open negotiations to acquire Greenland and to impeach federal judges who had ruled against the Trump administration.
For Ogles, the campaign finance investigation is just one of many scandals uncovered by NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
Those investigations revealed that Ogles fabricated or exaggerated much of his political biography, including his claims to be an economist, a nationally recognized expert in tax policy and healthcare, a trained police officer, even an expert in international sex crimes.
He claimed to have an undergraduate degree in International Relations, but NewsChannel 5 Investigates obtained his college transcript, which showed that he had a general degree in Liberal Studies. He took only one economics course and got a “C” grade.
Ogles also claimed to have received a “graduate education” or to have done “graduate work” at both Vanderbilt and Dartmouth. Instead, we discovered that he had enrolled in several non-credit courses offered for professionals.
On his resume, the Tennessee Republican claimed to have served four years on the “board of directors” for the city of Franklin – which does not have a board of directors.
NewsChannel 5 also raised questions about what Ogles did with nearly $25,000 that he raised following the stillborn death of his child. He claimed the money would be spent on a children’s burial garden, but our investigation revealed that never happened.
The congressman refused to provide any evidence of what he did with the money.
More recently, our investigation raised questions about tens of thousands of dollars that Ogles claimed to have spent out of his campaign accounts to companies that do not appear to be in the business of providing the services he claimed to have purchased. In some cases, there is no evidence that the companies actually exist.
He later amended those questionable campaign disclosures.
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Do you have information that would help me with my investigation? Send me your tips: phil.williams@newschannel5.com
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