A former sheriff, out of money to appeal a conviction in a federal bribery case, faces 10 years in jail and is throwing, in the judicial sense, a “Hail Mary” to save his freedom. Is his career as a dedicated constitutional officer for a growing Virginia community gone in cloud of corruption—or is this a case of malevolent prosecution by the former Biden administration? That depends on who you ask.
Scott Jenkins, who spent 10 incident-free years as Culpeper County sheriff, was accused by federal prosecutors of conspiracy, fraud, and bribery after an undercover investigation where agents and informants say they offered the sheriff money in exchange for the position of “auxiliary deputy.” The position was ceremonial and included no income or arrest powers.
Jenkins says that his conviction during the waning days of the Biden administration and his recent sentencing was a railroad job due to his outspoken position supporting private gun ownership and his role as a commentator on cable television on subjects like guns and famous first family laptops.
When Jenkins was convicted in December, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia Zachary Lee said, “Jenkins violated his oath of office and the faith the citizens of Culpeper County placed in him when he engaged in a cash-for-badges scheme.”
Lee, a Joe Biden appointee, remains in that position pending President Donald Trump’s appointment of either state Del. Todd Gilbert or former Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci to that position.
First, the backstory. In the height of the voters’ abdication of many Virginia Republicans in 2017 after Trump began his first term as president, control of the Virginia General Assembly shifted to the Democrats for the first time in a decade. Coupled with fellow Democrat and new Gov. Ralph Northam ready to sign just about anything into law, constitutionalists in the commonwealth were very concerned about free speech, privacy, property rights, and—most of all—gun ownership.
As the new Democrat-controlled General Assembly convened in January 2018, a crowd of over 20,000 Virginia gun owners jammed the streets of Richmond for the annual Virginia Citizen’s Defense League “lobby day” at the Capitol.
Amid this angst, Jenkins joined many other Virginia sheriffs in announcing that their counties would be “sanctuaries” for gun owners. They said that they simply would not prosecute gun laws they saw as unconstitutional in the same way that liberal prosecutors were not turning illegal aliens over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in other jurisdictions.
When then-Attorney General Mark Herring suggested that the sheriffs did not have the authority to do that, Jenkins told this reporter during an interview on my morning radio program that, if challenged, he would “deputize every gun owner in Culpeper County.”
That statement would come back to haunt the sheriff.
An undercover sting operation began two years later in 2022, shortly after Jenkins took part in a law enforcement review of a laptop that was alleged to have been the property of Biden’s son, Hunter. Jenkins began garnering national attention as frequent guest on Fox News and other cable outlets as a result.
The sting operation was arranged by the Department of Justice under the leadership of then-Attorney General Merrick Garland and involved a man named Kevin Rychlik, who was facing federal charges for tax evasion involving his failed flight school business and his owing $3.4 million in back taxes. Rychlik became a confidential informant for the federal government.
Rychlik testified that he gave Jenkins $5,000 in exchange for being given one of those auxiliary deputy positions. Moreover, Rychlik testified that he would regularly connect Jenkins with potential campaign contributors looking to secure similar auxiliary deputy designations.
In an interview with the “Law Enforcement Today” radio program, Jenkins said that Rychlik, like many citizens, contributed money to his reelection campaign and that Rychlik had been a partner with the county search and rescue team through his company, Virginia Search and Rescue. It was during that time that Jenkins said Rychlik asked that he and his team be made auxiliary deputies after they had been shot at by a suspect they were searching for. Jenkins said that was why he was given the position, not in exchange for campaign contributions.
Two of the men that Rychlik brought to Jenkins were undercover FBI agents whose interactions with Jenkins were surreptitiously videotaped, during which they told the sheriff that they hoped to use their badges to “skirt TSA lines” and “get out of speeding tickets.”
You would understandably think that a jury would hear both of those accounts and then weigh the evidence to arrive at their verdict. However, during the trial, Jenkins contends that Judge Robert Ballou repeatedly shut down the defense team’s attempts to bring in other witnesses or evidence. At one point, the judge scolded him, saying that he hired “unqualified, unvetted people who were untrained, and you didn’t train in law enforcement!”
Jenkins was found guilty in December and was just sentenced to 10 years in prison in March.
Jenkins said that he wants to appeal but has no money left to pay for it. He told an audience of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, “I really believe if [Trump or Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin] could hear the other side, which I couldn’t get in front of the jury, I believe wholeheartedly they would help.”
For its part, the law enforcement community is rallying behind Jenkins on social media to ask Trump to either commute his sentence or pardon him unconditionally.
Certainly “selling” law enforcement positions is a serious crime, but when you consider that an auxiliary sheriff has no arresting authority and is a ceremonial position, one must ask if that was what was really going on here.
