Brett Favre claims that he did absolutely nothing wrong with welfare funds and that the media is smearing him with sh***! He believes he’s unjustly being smeared by the media via Mississippi Free Press;
A week after hiring an ex-Trump White House attorney, retired NFL star Brett Favre is telling Fox News that he did not know that $1.1 million he received from a Mississippi nonprofit and millions he helped his alma mater obtain to build a volleyball stadium were federal welfare funds.
“I have been unjustly smeared in the media,” he said in a statement the conservative news outlet published online this morning. “I have done nothing wrong, and it is past time to set the record straight.”
Between 2016 and 2019, Mississippi officials and nonprofit operators misspent more than $77 million, prosecutors say. That includes $1.1 million in Temporary Assistance For Needy Families funds that Mississippi Department of Human Services Director John Davis funneled through the nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center and paid to Favre–officially in exchange for recording promotional material and attending several events.
Davis and MCEC’s director who helped direct the money, Nancy New, have pleaded guilty to multiple charges in the sprawling scandal. Text messages released in public court filings show that New helped Favre obtain $5 million in funds for the volleyball project for the University of Southern Mississippi, in addition to $1.1 million in TANF funds MCEC paid to Favre directly, after they met in the summer of 2017.
Court filings say that the $1.1-million payment was to help Favre cover additional costs beyond the first $5 million Davis agreed to pay for construction of the stadium. None of the available texts indicate that Favre knew the money came specifically from welfare funds, though they do suggest he knew it was MDHS money.
After a meeting with Davis on July 24, 2017, Favre sent Nancy New a text message thanking her, saying that “John (Davis) mentioned 4 million and not sure if I heard him right.” He called it a “Very big deal.” The figure later rose to $5 million.
“No one ever told me, and I did not know, that funds designated for welfare recipients were going to the University or me,” Favre said in the Fox News statement. “I tried to help my alma mater USM, a public Mississippi state university, raise funds for a wellness center. My goal was and always will be to improve the athletic facilities at my university.”
Flip to the next page for the evidence that Favre knew exactly what was going on.
