Angelica Pacheco

In January 2024 she opened a Republican club office to campaign for Donald Trump during the presidential primaries. She was indicted five months later. Seven days after that she was removed from the office her neighbours had elected her to.

The court questioned the timing of the indictment and described it as highly suspect.

She could not afford a lawyer. She was represented by the Federal Public Defender — which is what having no lobbyists and no connections actually looks like when the federal government charges you.

She was the only person charged in a business she did not own and did not sign for. The government told the grand jury that she had signed the Florida business licence application and that she had signed the loans. She signed neither.

Her lawyers moved to dismiss on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct. Shortly afterward the government offered to drop the entire indictment, and did. The collapse of that case was covered by the Miami Herald.

It was not a narrowing of the case. It was a replacement.

The original indictment charged $19.1 million in healthcare fraud together with a PPP count concerning one loan and a certification that the business was not engaged in unlawful activity. All of it was dismissed. The government then charged her by superseding information — a charging document filed by a prosecutor, which no grand jury reviews — with an offence that had never appeared in the indictment. It concerned a different loan: a second-draw PPP application, and an incorrect figure in a payroll total.

She translated that form. She did not calculate the figures on it, and she did not sign it. The court acknowledged on the record at sentencing that the funds were used for business purposes. Comparable matters are routinely resolved civilly. Hers was not.

A felony charged by information cannot proceed unless the defendant waives her right to be indicted by a grand jury — and that waiver happens as part of a plea. So the count she pleaded to was written after the government’s own case had collapsed, was never tested by a grand jury, and existed only because she agreed to it in exchange for probation.

Her lawyers had also moved to dismiss for selective prosecution. In its official response, the government stated that it could charge her for the deterrent effect. Not for what she had done. For the message her prosecution would send to other people.

Faced with a plea to probation or gambling her young son’s future against the word of the federal government at trial, she took the plea. On 16 April 2026 she was sentenced to three years of probation and no term of imprisonment, and may apply to end that probation early after one year.

Thousands of people voted for her. None of them got to vote on whether she should be removed.