TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Congressman's Sister Pleads Guilty

Congressman's Sister Pleads Guilty

By Andrew Tilghman - June 18, 2008, 6:55PM

One day after Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) announced he will seek re-election despite his upcoming federal trial, his sister pleaded guilty in a federal court in New Orleans.

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Brenda Jefferson, a younger sister of embattled U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, pleaded guilty this afternoon to concealing her knowledge of an alleged conspiracy to take money from nonprofits that involved several of her relatives.

The alleged conspiracy was the centerpiece of an recent indictment charging her sister, 4th District Assessor Betty Jefferson, her brother, political strategist Mose Jefferson, and her niece, Angela Coleman, with plundering more than $600,000 from three charities they controlled.

Brenda Jefferson, who also goes by the name Brenda Foster, signed a summary of the government's case against her in which she says that Coleman and Betty Jefferson made out a series of checks to her but then deposited the money in their own accounts.

Jefferson is awaiting trial on separate corruption charges in Virginia.

5 Comments

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What is it with LA politics? So many of the politicians can't stand the light of day.

Posted by soupson52
June 18, 2008 7:22 PM | Reply | Permalink

It's a little like th Nixon problem. It wasn't that he did bad things other politicians hadn't done. It was just that he did so MANY of them!

Posted by soupson52
June 18, 2008 7:33 PM | Reply | Permalink

Cunningham ran for reelection knowing full well his dumb ass was guilty as sin too. Jefferson is a friggin weenie.

Posted by Dusty
June 18, 2008 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink

Is there a special circle in hell for people who defraud charities?

About Orleans Metropolitan Housing and Care Unlimited, two of the three nonprofits the Jeffersons and friends benefited from, The Times-Picayune wrote this on July 2, 2006:

One of her last official acts as the City Council member for District B, Renee Gill Pratt steered a $16,071 city grant from a council discretionary fund to a little-known Central City nonprofit agency called Orleans Metropolitan Housing.
Gill Pratt didn't mention her long history of showering millions in taxpayer money on the group -- or her ties to its president, Mose Jefferson, with whom she has had a long personal relationship. In an interview, Gill Pratt described Mose Jefferson -- the brother of embattled U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, Gill Pratt's political mentor and former boss -- as a friend.

During the past 12 years, Gill Pratt and other Jefferson allies have steered at least $5.5 million in public money to Orleans Metropolitan Housing and Care Unlimited. While most of the money came through the long-derided and recently junked Office of Urban Affairs discretionary fund controlled by the Legislature, where she spent a dozen years before joining the City Council, the dismantling of that program has hardly turned off the spigot.

In fact, in the just-concluded legislative session, the state budget bill earmarked $300,000 for Care Unlimited, though it does not state any purpose for the money. Orleans Metropolitan, meanwhile, landed $150,000 for similarly nebulous goals. Both groups' stated missions are to provide minor repairs to homes of people in the community.
http://www.nola.com/frontpage/t-p/index.ssf?/base/news-6/1151823733170410.xml

This is ugly on so many levels—stealing from charities, using the beleaguered people of New Orleans as the way to get donations, betraying the public trust—that I really hope they all get the Abramoff treatment, or worse.

And if Wm. Jefferson is involved with the family business, get him the hell out of Congress now. He's the last thing the Democrats or the country needs right now.

Posted by The Facilitatrix
June 18, 2008 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink

I was shocked in 2006 when he won re-election (this was after freezer-gate). I will not be shocked in 2008 if he wins re-election again.

Posted by Ben
June 19, 2008 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink