London Mayor Randall Weddle pleads not guilty to felony campaign finance charges
London Mayor Randall Weddle entered a not guilty plea Wednesday to four felony excessive campaign contribution charges the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office has brought against him last month.
Prosecutors say the mayor gave more than $93,000 to Gov. Andy Beshear and the Kentucky Democratic Party on behalf of family members and business associates in violation of individual donor limits. A special-called Laurel County grand jury indicted Weddle in March.
Weddle briefly appeared in Laurel County Circuit Court Wednesday but did not answer any questions from the press. His attorney, J. Guthrie True, waved his right for the charges to be formally read aloud. Instead, lawyers sparred over whether Laurel County is the proper venue for the case to be tried.
The attorney general’s office is contesting True’s motion to move the case to Frankfort, a motion based on the fact Weddle was out of the country at the time the gifts were made. State law specifies campaign violation cases should be tried in the county where the alleged offenses occurred or Franklin Circuit Court, which has jurisdiction over state government matters.
Prosecutors filed a response late Tuesday night arguing there are grounds to prosecute the case in Laurel County given the personal credit card used to make the donations lists a county address and the donations were to a gubernatorial candidate and statewide political party.
“These excess contributions were made to a statewide party and a statewide race that affected every Kentuckian, especially the citizens of Laurel County,” Special Prosecutions Unit Deputy Director Ramsey Dallum told Laurel County Circuit Judge Michael Caperton Wednesday.
True said he doesn’t understand why prosecutors are so adamant about keeping the case in Laurel County, as the statute is clear. The government runs the risk of what he called an unlikely conviction being overturned if the case were to be tried there, he said.
“The General Assembly’s been very specific in campaign finance cases that the cases have to be brought either in the Franklin Circuit court, because the campaign finance reports have to be filed in Frankfort, or they have to be brought in the county where the contribution was made, solicited or received,” he told a gaggle of reporters outside the courtroom after Wednesday’s hearing. “None of those things occurred at Laurel County.”
The attorney general’s response acknowledges Weddle was on a yacht in the Bahamas at the time he made the donations to Beshear and the KDP. The specificity on where cases should be tried was designed to resolve instances where crimes are alleged to have occurred across multiple counties. In those cases, prosecutors argued, deference should be given to the county where the defendant was indicted.
Caperton said he wants to give lawyers on both sides more time to argue their motions on the venue. He said he has no interest in fighting to keep the case in Laurel County, but he doesn’t yet know “how important it is” that proceedings move to the state capital.
Weddle so far hasn’t denied that he made the donations, but his lawyer has insisted he wasn’t aware they were in violation of the law. Kentucky’s criminal campaign finance laws requires individuals to make excessive gifts “knowingly,” which didn’t occur in Weddle’s case, True has said.
The Kentucky Registry of Election Finance, which initially flagged more than $200,000 in donations tied to Weddle and investigated the mayor in 2025, deferred a staff recommendation that would have settled the matter with a fine. Instead, members of the board kept the investigation open and referred it to Republican Attorney General Russell Coleman.
Weddle’s supporters claim he is the clear victim of a political prosecution by an attorney general at odds with Beshear, who is a Democrat.
Coleman, who announced the charges in a rare press conference last month, sought to ward off those claims early, saying he was acting on behalf of the people of London and Southeast Kentucky.
“I’m certainly not here because Mr. Weddle made contributions to a candidate of a different party from me,” Coleman said. “I’m standing here today announcing this indictment for the people of London, Kentucky.”
