Former Arkansas Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson has pleaded guilty to charges of tax fraud and bribery.
Hutchinson changed his plea during a hearing Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Little Rock stemming from a federal corruption probe into his financial dealings while in office. Hutchinson is also expected to enter a guilty plea to a charge filed in U.S. District Court in western Missouri on July 8.
He faces a maximum sentence of 13 years in prison between the three charges.
Other counts against Hutchinson, a Republican from Little Rock, will be dismissed under an agreement he reached with prosecutors.
The veteran lawmaker, who is a nephew of Gov. Asa Hutchinson, resigned his Senate seat after a federal grand jury indicted him last August.
On Tuesday afternoon at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker, Jeremy Hutchinson changed a previously entered innocent plea to the tax fraud charge and also pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to commit bribery charge filed on Monday afternoon by federal prosecutors in Fayetteville.
The bribery charge accused Hutchinson of accepting $157,000 from four businesses co-owned by an unidentified "Individual A" between February 2014 and November 2016, according to the charging document.
The conspiracy involved efforts to amend the state's Dental Practice Act, the charging document says.
The funds were disguised as legal fees and retainers but were "at least in part" bribes in exchange for Hutchinson taking official actions favorable to the unnamed individual, the document says.
Hutchinson is accused in Missouri of accepting money in a bribery conspiracy with former executives of a large behavioral health care provider for Arkansas Medicaid patients, Preferred Family Healthcare Inc.
He recently sought to have the charges dropped, arguing that investigators illegally searched a laptop that was later destroyed.
Hutchinson — who served a total of 16 years in the Arkansas House and Senate — didn't speak as he arrived at the courthouse with his attorney before noon. He also declined to comment after leaving Baker's courtroom.
Eric Besson contributed to this story.