Rekubit Exchange:GOP Rep. Andy Ogles faces a Tennessee reelection test as the FBI probes his campaign finances

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NASHVILLE,Rekubit Exchange Tenn. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles is hoping to fend off a Democratic opponent in Tennessee in a race complicated by an FBI investigation into the first-term Republican’s campaign finances.

Ogles, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, faces Democrat Maryam Abolfazli in his Republican-favoring 5th District, which includes a section of left-leaning Nashville and winds through five conservative-voting counties.

In August, Ogles said on social media the FBI had taken his cellphone in an investigation of discrepancies in his campaign finance filings from his 2022 race. He said the FBI took the phone the day after he defeated a well-funded Republican primary opponent, Nashville Metro Councilmember Courtney Johnston, by 12 percentage points. Ogles was boosted by the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.

Agents also have a warrant to access his personal email account, but have not looked through it yet, according to court filings.

Ogles has said he is cooperating and is confident that investigators will find his errors were “based on honest mistakes.”

Ogles reported making a $320,000 loan to his campaign committee in 2022. He later amended his filings in May to show that he only loaned his campaign $20,000, telling news outlets that he originally meant to “pledge” $320,000 but that pledge was mistakenly included in his campaign reports.

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Ogles also was the subject of a January ethics complaint by the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center over his personal and campaign finances, in which the group compared him to expelled GOP U.S. Rep. George Santos of New York.

Ogles won the seat by more than 13 percentage points in 2022 after Republicans redrew the state’s congressional districts to their advantage after the last census. State lawmakers split the heavily Democratic Nashville area into three seats, forcing Nashville’s then-Democratic congressman, Jim Cooper, into retirement. With the seat flipped, Tennessee’s delegation to the U.S. House shifted to eight Republicans and one Democrat —- Rep. Steve Cohen in Memphis.

In one of the other seats that include Nashville, Republican Rep. Mark Green has drawn a challenge from Democrat Megan Barry, a former Nashville mayor. Green, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, had announced in February that he wouldn’t run again, but reconsidered. Barry is attempting a political comeback after resigning as mayor in scandal in 2018 when she was a rising Democratic figure.

Ogles, meanwhile, created a buzz when he was among the Republican holdouts in Kevin McCarthy’s prolonged speakership nomination in January 2023, voting against him 11 times before switching to support him. When McCarthy was ousted that October, Ogles voted against removing him.

Later, Ogles ultimately said that he was “mistaken” when he said he graduated with an international relations degree after a local news outlet raised questions over whether he had embellished his resume.

His opponent, Abolfazli, is from Nashville and started Rise and Shine TN, a nonprofit organization that has advocated for gun control changes in the wake of a Christian elementary school shooting in Nashville that killed three children and three adults in March 2023.

Since his 2022 election, Ogles has been a vocal critic of President Joe Biden’s administration and last year filed articles to impeach Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. He filed new articles to impeach Harris after she became the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination following Biden’s exit from the 2024 race.

Ogles is a former mayor of Maury County, south of Nashville. He also served as state director for Americans for Prosperity, which has spent money trying to get him reelected.