The united states department of justice agreed to promptly return or destroy property seized in the nearly two-year criminal investigation of Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles. His legal team moved Tuesday to drop an emergency bid after the department said it would not keep the evidence.
Andy Ogles and the search warrants
The case centered on potential fraud involving campaign finance reports Ogles filed during his first run for Congress in 2022. FBI agents served a search warrant on him in August 2024 to confiscate his personal cell phone, and a month earlier the FBI had obtained a warrant to seize his personal email records from Google.
Ogles’ legal team filed an emergency motion to block agents from looking at the material. Prosecutors then agreed not to examine the phone or email data while U.S. Magistrate Alistair E. Newbern weighed the dispute.
Newbern and Boucek
Last December, Newbern asked new U.S. Attorney Braden H. Boucek to tell the court whether prosecutors still intended to pursue the investigation. Boucek replied that the parties had been awaiting a ruling for more than 14 months. In January 2025, prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville withdrew from the case shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, and future matters were said to be handled by attorneys in the department’s public integrity section in Washington, D.C.
Ogles said the investigation should never have happened. He said the Biden DOJ had no right to rummage through a sitting congressman’s legislative communications.
Andy Ogles response
In a written statement after the agreement, Ogles called it “a complete win for the responsible exercise of prosecutorial discretion and respect for the Constitution’s Separation of Powers,” and said, “From the day the FBI showed up, I said this investigation should never have happened and that the Biden DOJ had no right to rummage through a sitting congressman's legislative communications. Today, the Justice Department has effectively acknowledged I was right.”
His lead defense attorney, Alex Little, said, “There’s a hard constitutional line around investigations of sitting members of Congress, and this case shows why that line exists.” The department’s decision leaves the seized phone and email records set to be returned or destroyed rather than reviewed, which tracks the defense’s position and narrows the case to an end point rather than a live fight over the evidence.
