24 Facts About Mel Reynolds

Melvin Reynolds was born on January 8,1952 and is an American politician from Illinois.

Mel Reynolds won a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford, where he attended Lincoln College and received an LL.

Mel Reynolds founded the Community Economic Development and Education Foundation.

Mel Reynolds ran three times from 1988 to 1992 in Democratic Party elections for the 2nd District against incumbent Gus Savage, who was known for racially incendiary and anti-Semitic remarks that drew criticism from both Republicans and Democrats.

Mel Reynolds was given police protection for the rest of the campaign; Savage's supporters accused Reynolds of staging the incident to generate sympathy for himself and suspicion of Savage.

Mel Reynolds did not directly accuse Savage of organizing the attack.

Mel Reynolds voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement and introduced legislation on gun control.

Mel Reynolds faced charges of child pornography for asking the underage campaign worker to obtain "lewd photographs of another girl who was age 15" and obstruction of justice for convincing one of the girls involved to lie to authorities.

Mel Reynolds initially denied the charges, which he claimed were racially motivated.

Mel Reynolds was sentenced to five years in federal prison and was expected to be released in 1998.

Mel Reynolds served all of his first sentence, and served 42 months in prison for the later charges.

President Bill Clinton then commuted his sentence for bank fraud and Mel Reynolds was released from prison.

Mel Reynolds served the remaining time in a halfway house.

In 2004, Mel Reynolds sought to win back his old House seat, but was overwhelmingly defeated in the Democratic primary by the man who had succeeded him, Jesse Jackson, Jr.

Mel Reynolds sought the seat again, running in the 2013 special election to replace Jackson after Jackson retired.

Mel Reynolds came in 7th place in the Democratic primary.

On February 18,2014, Mel Reynolds was arrested in Zimbabwe for overstaying his visa.

Mel Reynolds was allegedly found to be in possession of pornographic videos he had filmed with several women at the hotel where he was staying.

Mel Reynolds had purportedly accrued over $24,000 in hotel charges that he had yet to pay.

Mel Reynolds claimed in early March 2014 to be hiding there from Zimbabwean death squads, who he claimed were targeting him because he possessed information about American companies from Chicago doing business illegally in Zimbabwe.

On June 26,2015, Mel Reynolds was indicted by a grand jury for failure to file federal income tax returns for the 2009 through 2012 tax years on more than $400,000 income.

Mel Reynolds was sentenced by Gettleman to six months in prison on May 10,2018, which he began serving at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago on August 1.

At a press conference after the sentencing, Mel Reynolds stated he planned to move to South Africa with his daughter after his release.

Mel Reynolds received permission from the US court to travel to Africa while on supervised release.