Brett Favre questioned by FBI in Mississippi welfare fraud scandal

 Brett Favre questioned by FBI in Mississippi welfare fraud scandal

NFL Hall -of-famer brett favre has been questionedby the FBI in relation to a case in which the federal government belives Mississippi "squandered" fedral welfare founds by providing $ 5 million ton a volleyball facility with ties a Favre . Mississippi receives $ 90 million annually in welfare from the federal  government to disperse as it sees fit to those in need .  The state rejects 90 % of people who apply for welfare , howear , according to NBC news.

NBC News exclusively reported the federal government thinks Mississippi's welfare agency misspent $ 70 million in money meant to be distributed to people in need, instead using the money as a "slush fund," spending it on pro wrestler appearances, air travel and a volleyball facility at the university of Southern Mississippi tied to favre.

Brett Favre's lawyer, Butd Holmes, says his client was questioned by the FBI in a mississippi welfare fraud case that his followed him for more than two years, according to ken Dilanian and Laura Strickler of NBC News.

Former Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant is accused of paying Favre $ 1.1 million in 2017 and 2018 to make motivational speeches, appear at promotionalevents and appear on the radio, per the Associated press.

 The state was given $70 million from the federal government through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which is designed to provide financial assistance to those in need.

From that report:

"It's 3rd and long and we need you to make it happen!!" favre wrote to the governor in late December 2018 , according to next messages recently obtained by Mississippi Today .

 " I will open a whole ," Bryant responded , piggybacking on the football metaphor .

 Less then a week later , Favre would meet with Bryant's welfare officials to strike a deal for a $ 1.7 million investment in the biomedical startup Prevacus, which promised it had found a treatment for concussions. Prosecutors now say that money was stolen from a federal program intended to serve the state's poorest residents - a pot of money that had virtually no oversight.

From the NBC News report:

"All of it remains quite a mystery," Pigott NBC News , "as to why Mr. Favre would get the benefit of millions of dollars in TANF welfare money, both for a free for speeches he didn't make, $2 million -plus to go to a company in which he was the largest outside individual investor and $5 million for his alma mater to play volleyball in a villeyball building.

"Pigott" is a Brad pigott, the former U.S. Attorney, who was fired by current Mississippi's welfare agency, and Favre was one of the 38 grant recipients named.

"Governor Bryant gave tens of millions of dollars of this TANF welfare money to a nonprofit led by a person who he knew well and who had more connections with his political party than with the good people in Mississippi who have the heart and the skills to actually cajole people out of poverty or prevent teenage pregnancies".

Pigott told  News. "The notion of tens of millions of dollars that was intended by the country to go to the alleviation of poverty - and to see it going toward very different purposes- was appalling to many of us. Mr. Favre was a very great quarterback, but having been a great NFL quarterback, he is not well acquainted with poverty."

In a April,2022 interview with Mississippi today's Anna Wolfe:

Bryant also said that he had no idea any of the grants were coming for welfare founds- a fascinating admission for a state governor to make ,"I had no idea ."

Bryant said, And here's the thing about being governor: you have to depend on a lot of people, the internal controls of every agency. So, my thought initially was, How could this happen? 'How could someone in the agency not identify this? How could the auditor not find this?' And I know that because the audit every other year, but you've got an assistant attorney genral there at DHS. Surely they're reviewing something. But  you have to believe- and I tired to put in as much internal controls when I was state auditor. I kept going to the Legislature and saying , 'we need more internal control,'