JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (CN) - A Republican political consultant for a disgraced central Florida tax collector asked an 11th Circuit panel on Thursday to reverse his bribery convictions stemming from a broad corruption probe of state elected officials.

Michael Shirley, 41, was convicted in 2023 of four counts of honest services fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and sentenced to seven years. Federal prosecutors accused him of inflating invoices paid from the tax collector's office to his consulting company, and an kickback scheme.

Shirley is one of a scattering of imprisoned associates of former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg, an formerly up-and-coming Florida politician later convicted of child sex trafficking.

Greenberg's conviction shined a light on the Seminole County tax collector's penchant for using his office for personal gain, including giving lucrative contracts to his friends, such as Shirley.

After helping unseat his political opponent for the tax collector office, Greenberg hired Shirley and his consulting company, Praetorian Integrated Services, immediately after taking office for $12,500 a month. Following the sale of a bank building meant for a new tax collector's office location, a friend of Greenberg, Joe Ellicot, picked up an envelope containing $6,000 from Shirley's office to give to the tax collector. The testimony provided by Ellicot, a former sports radio host, contributed to Shirley's conviction.

On Thursday, Kyle Fletcher, the court-appointed attorney for Shirley, told the three-judge appellate panel there was not enough evidence showing Shirley was bribing the tax collector, because Ellicott testified he never opened the envelope or knew it contained money.

"Mr. Ellicott had no idea what was in the envelope, and that if there was any money, he had no idea," Fletcher said. "The direct evidence never established a quid pro quo from Mr. Shirley to Mr. Greenberg, which is required by law to establish that there's a kickback. So therefore, there was never an acceptance of a bribe."

Fletcher, with a pronounced Southern accent, continued with a reference to a popular TV series.

"I remember in 'True Detective,' Woody Harrelson stated, 'You cannot let your theories become your facts,'" he said. "And I think Mr. Shirley was found guilty based upon theories, not facts."

U.S. District Judge Paul Huck, sitting by designation from the Southern District of Florida, pushed back.

"Six thousand dollars was paid to your client and in return, he got what I think some people would term a sweetheart deal," Huck, a Bill Clinton appointee, said. "Why is that not quid pro quo?"

"Well, to be a quid pro quo by the law, your honor, it has to be up front," Fletcher countered. "It's got to be before that act. If you're starting getting favors from someone, a public official, and then in the middle of that, he supposedly gave him $6,000 - that's what you call a gratuity."

In 2022, Ellicott was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in the bribery scheme.  

Attorney Gregory Kehoe, on behalf of the government, pointed to testimony from other employees of the tax collector's office.

"The fact remains that while he did some reprinting and some rebranding, virtually everybody said that they couldn't describe what Shirley did other than sit around the office and chat with Mr. Greenberg and drink coffee," Kehoe said. "Except, of course, on one occasion, in rather black humor, he said hello, and people in the office said that was a $4,000 hello. So the fact remains that people in there didn't even know what he was doing."

Kehoe defended the prosecution of Shirley under honest services fraud, a charge based on abusing a position of trust.

"The public official who took the bribe was Greenberg, and the individual who was responsible for doing it and giving that bribe was, in fact, Shirley," he said. "Somehow, the defense seems to think that Shirley is just like the guy who comes in as the plumber and has no responsibilities to give honest services to a public official."

U.S. Circuit Judge Kevin Newsom, a Donald Trump appointee, countered that Shirley may not have a duty to uphold the public's trust.

"I've always understood it to be that the government official owes a duty to provide honest services to the public," Newsom said. "All you're really saying is that this guy was mixed up in a conspiracy with the public official, who himself was denying the public honest services, but it seems to me it confuses things to keep saying that this co-conspirator owes himself a statutory obligation. It just seems like the arrow is running in the wrong direction."

U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew Brasher, also a Trump appointee, joined Newsom and Huck on the panel.

The panel did not indicate when or how it will rule.

Greenberg made headlines in 2020 when federal prosecutors indicted him on 33 charges ranging from sex trafficking to wire fraud and stalking. In court documents, the elected official admitted to having sex with a teenage girl and introducing "the minor to other adult men, who engaged in commercial sex acts."

He also paid other women for sex, totaling more than $70,000, using his personal bank accounts and a credit card assigned to the tax collector's office.

Greenberg took a plea deal after agreeing to work with Department of Justice officials investigating former Florida House Presentative Matt Gaetz, a close ally, for similar accusations of sexual misconduct.

Federal prosecutors ended the investigation into Gaetz in 2023. Gaetz resigned his congressional seat in 2024 after President Donald Trump nominated him for U.S. attorney general, though Trump withdrew consideration amid the continuing accusations of sexual misconduct.

Source: Courthouse News Service