What do you award a guy who already has a monogrammed, bespoke, Orange Jumpsuit?
Ex Detroit Mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick mulls a long stay in Prison
Ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick indicted by feds on 19 mail fraud, tax counts
Kwame Kilpatrick illegally used the nonprofit Kilpatrick Civic Fund like a piggy bank to pay for crisis consultants, a Cadillac, trips — even summer camp for his kids — a federal grand jury said Wednesday, charging the former mayor with 19 counts of fraud and tax evasion.
The indictment comes seven years after Internal Revenue Service and FBI agents began looking into the fund in the wake of a Free Press report that a homeless shelter operator gave the fund $50,000 during Kilpatrick’s first run for mayor in 2001. The newspaper reported that Kilpatrick then wrote a letter recommending the shelter receive a multimillion-dollar public contract.
Despite Kilpatrick’s repeated claims to the contrary, the indictment says he used fund money for campaign and personal expenses, ranging from polling to yoga and golf lessons to college tuition for relatives.
Prosecutors contend he failed to report more than $640,000 in taxable income while mayor that he received in the form of cash, flights on private jets and perks paid for out of the civic fund.
“This indictment sends a clear message that those who make up their own rules based on fraud and deceit will be prosecuted,” said Maurice Aouate, head of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division in Detroit.
The indictment did not include public corruption charges, a point Kilpatrick spokesman Mike Paul seized upon.
He called speculation that the former mayor was involved in bribery schemes “lies from the pit of hell!”
“The FBI found nothing remotely close to that in their investigation because it never happened! This investigation puts an end to the ridiculous rumors that the mayor was personally involved with corruption, payoffs and bribes.”
Two questions behind this prosecution -
1) Why aren’t the Feds convicting Republican David Vitter for “Ho’ Fraud” – using federal money to pay for prostitutes? Or whatever happened to the criminal prosecution of Tom Delay?
2) What do you award a guy who already has an Orange Jumpsuit with his name on it?
The First Ever, BTx3 Orange Bootie Award to match that Orange Jumpsuit! With the Very Masculine Harley-Davison Logo... So the other Prisoners don't get the wrong idea!
Filed under: Orange Jumsuit Politicians Tagged: | federal charges, federal grand jury, indictment, jail time, Kwame Kilpatrick, mail fraud, Orange Booties, orange jumpsuit, tax fraud
Here in Detroit, the question hasn’t been “if” but “when”. This not only isn’t surprising, I don’t think it’s over yet… Bernard Kilpatrick (father) is also being investigated – I’m sure there’s more to come since they worked in tandem.
If Kwame would go Republican he could get a job on Faux!
Yeah I think Kwame and associates belong in jail.
But I am increasingly pissed that the Obama Administration has totally failed to prosecute the conservative scumbags who screwed the country the last 8 years.
There quite simply – shouldn’t be any free passes.
Agreed. But those passes are not free, they’ve been bought and paid for… by large multi-national corporations (see BP and Barton). Kilpartrick did serve his corporate masters here in the city; his “sales job” in TX for Compuware was a direct result. But his abuse of power extended beyond the reach of his local Detroit corporate benefactors.
Yeah – Those “Get Out of Jail” passes to politicians need to be investigated, too!
ROTFL @ the “Orange Booties”
@Btx3… The problem with the Obama’s Justice Department prosecution efforts has more to do with appeasement and politics. Hell, I thought Governor Riley would’ve been gotten a knock on the door from the Justice Department. But, I will just have to hold my breath on that one.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_lobbyist_probe
A Republican with an actual job. LOL
If Obama wants to improve his “approval rating” he needs to get tough on the criminal scum in politics…
And that means ALL the criminal scum.