Ex-Trump campaign official charged with human trafficking

The 70-year-old was appointed to chair Trump’s electoral campaign in Kentucky’s Campbell County last year

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By: Sebastien Malo

NEW YORK, May 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A former Kentucky campaign official for President Donald Trump is due in court on Friday after being charged with human trafficking in the U.S. southern state.

Timothy Nolan, a retired district court judge, was arrested last month and charged with forcing a minor to engage in commercial sex around August 2016.

He is also charged with inducing a minor to engage in sexual activity and giving alcohol to a minor, according to the complaint.

Nolan’s defense attorney said he denied all the charges.

The 70-year-old was appointed to chair Trump’s electoral campaign in Kentucky’s Campbell County last year, according to court documents in an unrelated civil suit in which he was the plaintiff.

He was also involved in choosing local delegates tasked with casting votes at the July 2016 Republican presidential primary from which Trump emerged as the party’s nominee, according to the same documents.

At his arraignment in mid-April Nolan was ordered to wear an ankle-monitoring device and not to have contact with the alleged victims, Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear, whose office is prosecuting the case, said in a press release.

Nolan, now a boxing promoter, is listed as sitting on a Kentucky school board, according to the board’s website.

He will appear in Kentucky’s Boone District Court on Friday for a preliminary hearing.

If convicted, Nolan faces a maximum 20 years for the human trafficking charge, according to a Kentucky Department of Corrections spokeswoman.

In the United States, sex trafficking is defined as commercial sex induced by force, fraud or coercion, or involving a minor under the age of 18.

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(Reporting by Sebastien Malo @sebastienmalo. Editing by Emma Batha.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)