Jesse Jackson Jr. arrived in court wearing a leather bracelet, not the gold-plated Rolex watch he bought with $43,350 in federal campaign cash. The former congressman’s head was bare, unadorned by the Michael Jackson fedora, purchased with $4,600 from the campaign kitty. His wife, at his side, eschewed the reversible mink parka, procured with $1,200 in campaign money from Edwards-Lowell furrier of Beverly Hills.
Those purchases — part of $750,000 that Jackson and his wife, Sandi, took from his campaign coffers for personal use — led the couple to enter his-and-hers guilty pleas Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington.
Their years-long spending spree, which included everything from movie tickets to a cruise and from health-club dues to an Eddie Van Halen guitar, has the Illinois Democrat looking at four to five years in prison, assuming Judge Robert Wilkins follows guidelines in his June 28 sentencing. Jackson already has served the sentence of public disgrace, resigning his seat after heading off to the Mayo Clinic for treatment of bipolar disorder. His father, the famed civil rights leader, sat in the first row of the audience as his namesake stood before the judge, dabbing his eyes and nose with a tissue, then weeping audibly as he entered his plea: “Guilty, Your Honor.” Three times during the proceedings, the defendant looked over his shoulder at his wife, who entered her guilty plea a few hours later, and offered a weak smile, which she returned. The last time, he mouthed the word “Sorry.” In the hallway after the proceedings, a red-eyed Jackson spied Lynn Sweet from the Chicago Sun-Times. “Tell everybody back home I’m sorry I let them down, OK?” he asked her.
The spectacle generated particular interest because of Jackson’s famous name, his once-promising career, and because of the lurid details of his fall.