The massive, multi-million-dollar welfare scam in Mississippi is an onion with many lawyers and levels. Some have been explored. Some haven’t been. Now, some may be stopping others from the effort to keep peeling.
As reported by Mississippi Today, the state’s welfare department has fired attorney Brad Pigott, who was hired to get to the bottom of the scandal. The firing happened roughly a week after he sent a subpoena to the University of Southern Mississippi aimed at exploring why and how the school received $5 million in welfare funds to build a volleyball stadium.
“All I did, and I believe all that caused me to be terminated from representing the department or having anything to do with the litigation, was to try to get the truth about all of that,” Pigott told Mississippi Today on Friday. “People are going to go to jail over this, at least the state should be willing to find out the truth of what happened.”
Pigott, in seeking more information about the $5 million payment to USM, was exploring the involvement of former NFL quarterback Brett Favre and former Mississippi governor Phil Bryant, among others. Favre played college football at USM an his daughter played volleyball at the school in 2017 and 2018.
The New York Times pushes the ball a little farther, after separately speaking to Pigott. The lawyer told the Times that Favre had promised to give $5 million to the construction of the volleyball stadium. Pigott claims that Favre, instead of writing the check, asked the Mississippi Community Education Center to fund the project. And the Mississippi Community Education Center was at the heart of the distribution of federal welfare money in a way that has created a major controversy in one of the nation’s poorest states.
Pigott told the Times that the center paid the $5 million, and then “disguised it as a payment for use of university facilities that did not occur.”
