Bryant has not been indicted but his fingerprints are all over the scandal in which millions that were supposed to be used for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, i.e. money that was supposed to help struggling poor people, were siphoned to pay for a volleyball stadium where Brett Favre’s daughter was attending college. Funds went to Favre, too.
From The Washington Post:
Bryant, a Republican, finished his second and final term as governor in January 2020. Weeks later, the first criminal charges were filed against six people, including John Davis, a Department of Human Services director chosen by Bryant.
…
The Mississippi Department of Human Services, with a new director, filed a civil lawsuit last year against Favre, three former pro wrestlers and more than three dozen other people and businesses to try to recover more than $20 million of the misspent money from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families anti-poverty program.
No criminal charges have been filed against Bryant, nor is he being sued, The Post reports. But he tried to block a subpoena seeking more information from him. In March, three news organizations filed their opposition. On Thursday, Bryant decided to release the material.
At the very least, Bryant was negligent in failing to notice that $77 million that was supposed to help the poorest people in Mississippi, the poorest state, had been misspent by his own appointee. But in his video statement announcing his decision to release the text messages, he expressed no remorse that so much money had been robbed from the poor. Instead, he made himself the big victim:
For more than a year, the media has pushed a narrative that is simply not true. The fact is, I did nothing wrong. I wasn’t aware of the wrongdoings of others. When I received evidence that suggested people appeared to be misappropriating funds, I immediately reported that to the agency whose job it is to investigate these matters. It’s been a long and difficult year watching as decades of my public service is dragged through the mud and hoping it doesn’t affect those closest to me.
Even Bryant’s decision was made out of victimhood, not any attempt to right a wrong:
Frankly, I’m tired of paying legal fees to respond to lawsuits that I’m not a party to in order to protect my privacy and an executive privilege that should exist for future governors.
Then came the “perfect messages” rhetoric:
What you will find in these text messages is a busy man, a governor of a state communicating in a kind and consistent manner to everyone with whom I dealt. I communicated with hundreds of people every week to accomplish good and to help run state government the best way I knew how.
Next, he threw all his cohorts under the bus:
As for the Southern Miss volleyball center, over a dozen lawyers from multiple entities approved the transactions. We all now have learned that attorneys from the Institutions of Higher Learning, the Attorney General’s Office, the Department of Human Services and Southern Miss, as well as attorneys from multiple nonprofits, all approved that transaction knowing where the money came from. As governor, even if I had wanted to make an expenditure like that happen, I didn’t have the power to do so.
Then it was back to whining. Bryant claimed his messages would be “again mischaracterized” by the left-wing media, collaborating with the Democrats, in order to “try to denigrate the success of my terms as governor and castigate Republican candidates in an election year.”
For extra victim points, he turned all Republicans into media martyrs: “This is a targeted attack and meant to cast a cloud over conservative candidates running for office this year. I am simply a means to their end.”
Sorry, Gov, but when people you’re supposed to be managing misspend nearly $80 million, the public that got robbed on your watch deserves much better than this.
