ST. PAUL, Minn. — A judge decided Wednesday that a former Minnesota state senator who is accused of trying to get a minor to be a prostitute and of trying to stop the FBI’s investigation from happening can go to a halfway house until his trial.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Shannon Elkins said that Republican Justin Eichorn does not pose a threat to the community and that there were good reasons for the things he did that federal prosecutors said should have kept him in jail. She did say, though, that there was enough proof to go to trial. He didn’t say anything Wednesday.
Charge papers say that the 40-year-old from Grand Rapids was caught in Bloomington on March 17 after texting with a police officer who pretended to be a 17-year-old girl and setting up a sex date for money. He quit the Senate on March 20 after being charged with attempted enticement of a child to engage in prostitution, a felony that comes with a minimum sentence of 10 years.
On Sunday, federal officials took steps to stop him from going to the halfway house on Tuesday as planned. They said he tried to call a “close, known associate” from jail to get Individual A, who the prosecutors named as him, to get a computer and other things from the St. Paul apartment where he lived alone while the legislature was in session. They said she could have hidden and thrown away proof in the apartment.
Charles Hawkins, the defense lawyer, said in court on Wednesday that Individual A is Eichorn’s wife. He told the FBI agent in charge of the investigation that she needed the computer because it had records about their apartment rental business, not because she wanted to destroy proof.
These people have four kids. On Monday, his wife asked for a divorce.
FBI agents were already at his apartment building when she got there last Friday morning. They said no to her request to get back a computer she said she used for her business. An agency called her a short time after she left and asked her to come back for an interview. She said no.
Agents searched the flat and found $1,000 in cash, a 9-mm handgun and ammunition, a laptop, a computer memory card, an iPhone, and several of Eichorn’s business cards from the Senate. They said it looked like the iPhone had been reset to its original settings, which can delete everything on the phone.
Wednesday, FBI Special Agent Matthew Vogel admitted that the phone seemed to have been reset on February 28, which was a long time before Eichorn started talking to the undercover officers. However, he said that the case was still being looked into.
Vogel also said that the defense had given him the computer’s password. They were able to get to some information, but he said they were still working on getting to some encrypted data.
Federal prosecutors led by Daniel Bobier said Eichorn lied when he told a pretrial services officer that he didn’t have any guns in his flat.
Hawkins, on the other hand, said that Eichorn got the officer wrong because of the noise in the holding room. He said Eichorn had the gun because he was getting threats because he backed a bill that would have made “Trump derangement syndrome” a real mental illness.
Hawkins wouldn’t say anything else after the meeting except that he was going to drive Eichorn to the halfway house in Duluth himself. And Eichorn wouldn’t talk to reporters as they were leaving the building.
On Tuesday, April 29, Gov. Tim Walz called a special election to fill the open seat. The new senator will be sworn in in time for the last few weeks of the legislative term. Tuesday, April 15, is that day. The district is in northern Minnesota, from Brainerd to Grand Rapids. It is mostly made up of Republicans. The Senate Democrats will still have a narrow lead, no matter what happens.
