The Sioux City woman sentenced Monday to four months in prison and four months of home confinement, after previously being found guilty of 52 counts of voter fraud, has 14 days to appeal her conviction in federal court.
A jury in fall 2023 found Kim Phoung Taylor guilty, ruling she had illegally filled out election documents and ballots for members of the Vietnamese community, who had limited ability to read and understand English.
Kim Taylor, 50, is the wife of Woodbury County Supervisor Jeremy Taylor. Prosecutors said she pursued unlawful means to help her husband, who ran for two electoral positions as a Republican candidate in 2020.
Right before she was sentenced, Kim Taylor declined to make any comment about the case. She had similarly not testified during the one week trial.
Federal prosecutor Richard Evans said, “The defendant has failed to take responsibility for her conduct…There was no remorse or contrition.”
Federal Judge Leonard Strand delivered the rare split sentence, noting that no defendant must speak in their defense in a trial, and it doesn’t impact the sentencing.
Strand sentenced Taylor to four months in prison, followed by four months home confinement, followed by two years of supervised release.
Taylor had faced the potential for five years in prison on each count of voter fraud. Strand explained that the pre-sentencing guidelines showed that Taylor could be sentenced for 18 to 24 months for each of the 52 counts.
Jeremy Taylor has been named an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, but has not been charged. He was present in the federal courtroom Monday with his wife, and the couple are raising six children, who were also in the courtroom.
Strand said his sentencing decision weighed the fact that Kim Taylor had no prior criminal history and a distinct need to raise a family with school-age children, which was balanced by the public good to punish the many voter fraud charges and to deter voter fraud.
Her attorney had asked for a sentence of nine months of home confinement.
Taylor was ordered to pay a $5,200 special assessment, which represents $100 for each felony count for which she was found guilty. She could have been assessed fines, but was not. Prosecutor Evans said that in spite of a robust family income, with Jeremy Taylor having three jobs and Kim Taylor operating a hair salon, the family was “under water” financially.
A tip from Woodbury County Auditor Pat Gill led federal authorities to investigate. Gill on Tuesday declined comment to the sentencing.
During his remarks, Strand referenced back to when Kim Taylor was arrested in January 2023 by federal authorities.
The judge called it “appalling” that “a strike team was sent in to arrest Mrs. Taylor at 7 a.m. in front of her children.”
Back during the 2023 trial, the prosecution called several witnesses who testified that the signatures on such voting materials as absentee ballot requests and absentee ballot return envelopes were not their signatures. A few people testified that they went to vote in 2020, only to be told they had voted, which was a huge surprise to them.
Jeremy Taylor was anticipated to attend the weekly Tuesday late afternoon meeting of the Woodbury County Board of Supervisors. Taylor has said he will not resign his position as a county supervisor, in spite of three fellow Republican board members calling on him to do so. He plans to finish out his four-year term through the end of the year.
Iowa House lawmakers on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill that would overhaul Iowa’s mental health and substance treatment disorder system.
Governor Kim Reynolds’ bill would get rid of the state’s mental health and disability service regions and provider networks that oversee substance use disorder treatment.
Instead seven behavioral health districts would be created to over mental health and substance use, and those would be overseen by the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services. Disability services would be placed directly under a division of HHS.
The bill passed the House on a vote of 88 to 6.
Additionally, some Iowa lawmakers are making a last-minute effort to ensure Iowans who were sexually abused by Boy Scout troop leaders decades ago can get their full payout as part of a national settlement.
Iowa’s strict time limit on childhood sexual abuse lawsuits means hundreds of Iowa victims could get as little as 30 percent of the money that’s owed them by the Boy Scouts of America.
Republican State Senator Tim Kraayenbrink of Fort Dodge said he drafted a bill after hearing from an impacted constituent.
He says it needs to become law by the end of the legislative session to help the victims in the Boy Scouts settlement.
Democratic State Senator Janet Petersen of Des Moines has been trying for years to eliminate the time limit for all child sex abuse lawsuits.
Joe Gargano of Fort Dodge wants lawmakers to act quickly. He says being abused as a child “obliterated” his life, and he was angry when he found out he would get less money than survivors in other states.
In other news, Sioux City Council members on Monday signed a Memorandum of Agreement concerning a proposed new bridge that will link recreation trails in Sioux City and Dakota Dunes in South Dakota.
The project calls for a new bridge over the Big Sioux River. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has determined that the existing bridge over the river is eligible to be on the National Register of Historic Places.
The memorandum affirms that the city, a golf course and the historic preservation groups in Iowa and South Dakota all agree that the new trail bridge project should proceed.
