Donor and consultant convicted again of trying to bribe North Carolina's insurance commissioner

abcnews.go.com:

A major North Carolina political donor and his associate have been convicted a second time of attempting to bribe the state's insurance commissioner to secure preferential regulatory treatment for his insurance business

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A major North Carolina political donor and his associate have been convicted a second time of attempting to bribe the state’s insurance commissioner to secure preferential regulatory treatment for his insurance business.

A federal jury convicted insurance magnate Greg Lindberg and former consultant John Gray on Wednesday of bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds and conspiracy to commit “honest services wire fraud” — when a person through a bribe seeks to deprive citizens of their right to honest services by a government official.

Both were convicted of the same crimes in 2020. In 2022, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, vacated convictions for Lindberg and Gray and ordered new trials, ruling that the trial judge gave jurors misleading instructions before they began deliberations. Soon after that ruling, Lindberg was released from an Alabama prison where he had been serving a seven-year sentence.

The retrial began last week in federal court held by U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn, who also presided over the 2020 trial.

“The defendants planned and executed an intricate scheme involving substantial campaign contributions to an elected official in exchange for favorable treatment," western North Carolina U.S. Attorney Dena King said in a news release. “This was not a lapse in judgment. It was a calculated bribery attempt and a blatant violation of federal law.”

Lindberg and Gray were among four people indicted in 2019, accused