https://www.startribune.com/state-gop-operative-charged-with-sex-trafficking-minors-claims-feds-targeted-him-for-being-rich/600140320/?refresh=trueThere's been something of an interesting development in a side story to the Ilhan Omar saga now that court filings are laid out.
Last year a GOP donor and operative in Minnesota was arrested under lurid charges of child sex trafficking, just hours after he posted a website unveiling purported DNA evidence that he and his operatives had obtained by traveling to Kenya, claiming to prove with DNA that Ilhan Omar's former husband Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was indeed her biological brother. It was quite the timing as he unveiled this story only to be immediately brought up on pedophilia charges, and shook up the state GOP, leading to the eventual resignation of Jennifer Carnahan, the GOP state chair who had been supported by this donor.
Now the facts of the case are out and its a bit more nuanced. What apparently is uncontested is that 31 year old Anton Lazzaro went on dates with girls in the 16-17 year range who he met through the sugar-baby website Seeking Arrangement (and a girl he met on it who introduced him to her friends), and that he had bought valuable gifts for them while shopping like cell phones, vape pens, a prada purse, etc. The age of consent in Minnesota is 16, making them of legal age normally. The state's indictment claims that Lazzaro was exchanging these gifts for sex as a form of prostitution, thereby making it ipso facto illegal sexual activity, and that because it was prostitution across state lines it can be charged as federal sex trafficking which has an age of consent of 18, thereby making it child sex trafficking. The defense has claimed that the girls were approached by government agents and 'convinced' that their consensual activities were actually prostitution after the fact, and that one girl attempted to extort him with a demand of $1000 in hush money by text message, which he offered to pay in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement, and that he is being targeted for political reasons and wealth.
The defense points out that there seems to be no precedent in all US federal case law for the government to charge a young man for engaging in consensual sexual activity with a girl of legal age based on the theory that giving her gifts makes it constitute a commercial sex act. I don't know if that claim is true or not, but it seems pretty jarring that this theory would criminalize... a lot of relationships. If a man buys a woman some jewelry or cosmetics or clothing while on a date at the mall and then goes home and they fuck consensually, is he now a john? Is she a prostitute? Under the eyes of the law, until this case was filed, they weren't. But the prosecution in this case is arguing that gift giving makes otherwise consensual sex into commerce, which is implicitly illegal regardless of age.
And of course, this overreach just happened to very conspicuously occur in the extreme far-left prosecutors office led by Keith "E Hakim" Ellison at the same time the guy was trying to prove Ilhan Omar married her own brother with DNA evidence, down to the hour.
So what's the difference between a date and a prostitute?
It might or might not be a legal grey area, but morally, the case is crystal clear if you ask me: when expensive gifts are the explicit reason a young girl goes on a "date" with an older, rich man and this arrangement was made formal beforehand by meeting via a well-known escort or sugar daddy site, then the intent of engaging in the act of prostitution by both sides is undeniable.
Making gifts during a regular date is normal, having a "date" specifically because you promised the girl expensive gifts is prostitution. In practice, it might often times be difficult to prove that a date hinged on the promise of payment via gifts, but this case right here seems dry and cut.