However, the reckless driving conviction was subsequently wiped from the records and reduced to a traffic infraction—"failure to exercise due care in regard to a pedestrian”—while Marshall's fine was cut to $45. Marshall later settled a civil lawsuit with Suchy out of court, though Marshall has always denied he hit his neighbor. In 2016, Huelskamp aired television ads featuring audio of Suchy calling 911 right after his confrontation with Marshall, who at the time was a practicing obstetrician, but Marshall went on to unseat Huelskamp by a convincing 57-43 margin.
The story attracted little attention in the following years until the Kansas City Star released its new report over the weekend. The paper revealed that prosecutor Carey Fleske, who had successfully convinced a judge to wipe Marshall’s reckless driving conviction clean, was the son of the future congressman’s business partner, Leonard Fleske. Marshall and the elder Fleske had co-founded a surgical center together in 2000, and the two were neighbors.
One former prosecutor who spoke with the Star, Patrick McInerney, described Carey Fleske's efforts to expunge Marshall's record as "bizarre," saying the process used is normally reserved for clerical errors, such as "where a 1 should have been a 2. It’s not to replace a whole charge." McInerny added that the charge Marshall ultimately wound up with was the sort a driver would get for having their "front wheels going over the white line in the crosswalk."
Marshall told KWCH in response, “I didn't even know who the prosecutor was since it was such a small matter …. In a small city, you know everybody. There's not an attorney in town whose kid I haven't delivered or played ball with, so that's life in a small city, and again, that's not the focus.” Marshall also refused the Star’s request to release an affidavit that might shed light on the matter.
This newly surfaced story, however, did not appear to give Marshall's allies any pause: On Tuesday, the deep-pocketed U.S. Chamber of Commerce also gave the congressman a potentially valuable endorsement. Much of the Republican establishment, both in Kansas and D.C., has rallied around Marshall in the hopes that he can stop former Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who lost a bid for governor in 2018 to Democrat Laura Kelly, from winning the party's nomination and jeopardizing the GOP's chances of holding this seat in November.
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