Calling it ‘dating,’ Anton Lazzaro asks U.S. Supreme Court to review sex trafficking conviction

Former Minnesota Republican operative Anton “Tony” Lazzaro is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review his trafficking conviction for paying five 15- to 16-year-old girls for sex.

Lazzaro, 34, was sentenced in August 2023 to 21 years in federal prison and is being held at the Sandstone Federal Correctional Institution with an August 2039 release date.

The U.S. Supreme Court last week notified the U.S. Court of Appeals of Lazzaro’s petition to have his case heard by the nation’s highest bench. Lazzaro lost his effort in February to have the appeals court overturn his conviction.

In his petition, Lazzaro argues that “the conduct alleged to be criminal consisted of little more than dating 16 and 17-year-old females.”

He goes on to pose the question, “Does a person who engages in otherwise lawful, consensual sex with a 16 or 17-year-old dating partner commit ‘sex-trafficking’ if the person gives unconditional gifts to the date?”

The petition contends the law is vague when it comes to what kind of items of monetary value can be exchanged in a sexual relationship.

“Does the gift of a Prada purse or an iPhone turn an ordinary, voluntary sex act into a ‘commercial’ sex act?” the filing continues. “What about lunch at a Chipotle restaurant?”

Lazzaro also alleged without success that the prosecution had engaged in misconduct by misrepresenting the “actual context of the communications” surrounding a photograph he sent to convicted co-defendant Gisela Castro Medina and her female friend.

Even before Lazzaro went on trial, he wrote to Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz that he was being selectively prosecuted by the government. He claimed his was the only one among hundreds of commercial sex trafficking cases in Minnesota in recent years to be pursued in federal court and not in state court, where the potential sentence ia far less severe.

Lazzaro faces long odds that the nation’s highest court will hear his case. According to the National Association of Attorneys General, the Supreme Court “grants an astonishingly small percentage” of what are formally known as writs of certiorari.

Lazzaro’s 2021 arrest proved an embarrassment for the Minnesota Republican Party, for which he had become a major donor. Jennifer Carnahan, who had close ties to Lazzaro but denied any knowledge of his criminal activities, stepped down as state GOP chair a week after his arrest.

In handing down the sentence, Schiltz recounted how Lazzaro sought out emotionally vulnerable girls — physically small, unsophisticated and alienated — and lured them with expensive gifts such as a $1,300 Prada purse. He sometimes sent them photos showing his wealth and connections to famous and powerful people, and impressed them with the private elevator that took them to his 19th-floor condo at the Hotel Ivy Residences in downtown Minneapolis.

Lazzaro maintained the sexual acts were consensual, but Schiltz said the premise of the federal sex trafficking statute is that children under the age of 18 are incapable of consenting to being sex trafficked.