WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — A blogger has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison for breaking into a nursing home to videotape a US Senator’s wife who is suffering dementia, in an attempt to smear the lawmaker, local media reported.
“[Clayton] Kelly on Monday was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for his role in the conspiracy to photograph the late wide of Sen. Thad Cochran as she lay in her nursing home bed suffering dementia,” The Clarion-Ledger said on Monday.
The blogger had been persuaded by several others to get images of Rose Cochran to use for a political video during Senator Cochran’s re-election fight against Senator Chris McDaniel.
The defendants planned to use the video to show that Senator Cochran was having an affair with one of his long-time staffers while his wife was ailing in a nursing home.
Kelly is also facing a two-and-a-half-year probation term because he cooperated with the authorities’ investigation since it began, according to his lawyer.
Cochran, however, won reelection to a seventh term in 2014, after defeating Chris McDaniel in an intense primary run-off election.
He married his longtime staffer Kay Webber in May 2015 following the death Rose Cochran in December 2014.
