A federal judge on Wednesday said she had “no doubt” there’s probable cause — enough evidence — against former state Sen. Justin Eichorn, a Republican from Grand Rapids, to sustain a federal charge of attempted coercion and enticement of a minor.
U.S. District Judge Shannon Elkins ruled against the prosecution, however, in allowing Eichorn to move to a halfway house under a long list of conditions. The prosecution argued Eichorn should be held in jail as he awaits trial because he allegedly attempted to conceal evidence and lied about owning a firearm.
During a two-hour hearing Wednesday — which combined a hearing for probable cause and a detention hearing — the prosecution and defense dissected the messages Eichorn allegedly sent to a person he believed was a 17-year-old girl but was actually an undercover Bloomington police officer.
Eichorn, who entered the federal courtroom in St. Paul escorted by U.S. Marshal officers wearing bright orange, was arrested on March 17 at a parking lot in Bloomington where he allegedly expected to meet the underage girl to pay for sex. He resigned from his Senate seat a few days after his arrest and moments before the Senate planned to expel him from the body.
Attempted coercion and enticement of a minor comes with a mandatory federal sentence of 10 years in prison.
In a court filing earlier this week, prosecutors alleged that Eichorn made phone calls from jail to an unnamed woman — referred to as “Individual A” in court documents — to arrange for the woman to pick up a laptop from Eichorn’s St. Paul apartment, where he lived during the legislative session.
Charles Hawkins, Eichorn’s defense attorney, on Wednesday revealed that that person was Eichorn’s wife, Brittany Eichorn — who filed for divorce earlier this week.
When law enforcement agents entered Eichorn’s St. Paul apartment, they found a red bag containing $1,000 cash, an SD memory card, a handgun and ammunition, a laptop and a factory-reset iPhone 6.
Eichorn told a probation officer in a pre-trial interview that he didn’t have any firearms in the St. Paul apartment. The prosecution said Eichorn lied, but Hawkins said Eichorn had trouble hearing the interviewer, who was conducting the interview in a U.S. Marshall’s holding cell with eight to ten other people.
“I respectfully suggest that anything that occurred was an honest mistake,” Hawkins told the judge.
Hawkins also said that Eichorn had the gun in his St. Paul apartment because he had received increasing threats after co-authoring a bill in the Minnesota Senate classifying “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as a mental illness.
Regarding the factory-reset iPhone 6, FBI Special Agent Matthew Vogel said investigators had not completed forensic analysis of the phone, but preliminary results show the iPhone was likely reset to factory settings on Feb. 28 — weeks prior to Eichorn’s arrest.
On March 20, Brittany Eichorn in a recorded phone call from jail told Justin Eichorn that “apartment stuff is taken care of, just so you know.” She told Eichorn she planned to go to the apartment to pick up a laptop the following day.
As FBI agents prepared to search Eichorn’s apartment on the morning of March 21, they encountered Brittany Eichorn. She asked to enter the apartment to retrieve a laptop she used for business. The FBI agents declined.
Hawkins told the judge that the Eichorns own a rental property company, which oversees 138 units, and Brittany Eichorn was trying to get the laptop for the leasing business, not to conceal or destroy evidence.
The judge said the prosecution did not present enough evidence to clearly indicate that Eichorn was a danger to the community or tried to tamper with evidence.
“Because it is unclear and because there is so much gray, the court finds the government has not met its burden to prove by clear and convincing evidence that no condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the safety of the community,” Elkins said.
In the probable cause hearing, Eichorn’s defense tried to poke holes in the prosecution’s charge, noting that Eichorn didn’t formally agree over the messages to pay for sex, though he did ask about the prices, including how much it would cost to have sex without a condom. The defense likened it asking questions about buying a car.
The prosecution said that Eichorn carried out the act of paying for commercial sex as far as he could take it and repeatedly messaged the undercover officer posing as a girl asking when she was available for sex even when he didn’t receive a response.
“He arrived exactly in the location the undercover agent posing as a minor girl told him to park,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Bobier. “The only thing that got in between Eichorn and having sex with a minor and paying for it is that it was a cop instead.”
Hawkins, during a cross examination of FBI agent Vogel, said that Eichorn could have decided to not go through with having sex with the girl once he arrived to the Bloomington location.
“You don’t know what he intended to do when he arrived there,” Hawkins said to Vogel.
When ruling that there was probable cause against Eichorn, the judge said that there doesn’t need to be a formal agreement to pay for sex, but the law states that an attempt to offer a minor anything in exchange for sex is illegal.