There’s a new sheriff in town in the Mississippi Republican welfare fraud case
It’s always been tricky to try to figure out if Senate Republicans have been using procedural moves to try to delay President Biden’s DOJ appointees in the hope of delaying the inevitable criminal probes into Republican corruption, or if they’ve been delaying things simply because they’re obstructors by nature. But either way, Senate Republicans have finally failed in their longstanding effort to keep Biden from appointing a new U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Mississippi. Why does this matter?
Mississippi is the location of a now-infamous scandal in which welfare funds were fraudulently misdirected by the state government in all kinds of embarrassing directions. The scandal has involved everyone from Republican Governor Tate Reeves to, incredibly, former NFL quarterback Brett Farve (a staunch Trump supporter).
The Southern District of Mississippi opened a criminal probe in the scandal awhile ago. And while that probe has surely moved forward under the interim U.S. Attorney in charge, any major charging decisions have been potentially on hold until the actual U.S. Attorney could be put in place. That’s why it’s a big deal that this position has finally been filled.
We’re still waiting to find out who the actual criminal targets are, and it’s far from clear who might or might not end up indicted. If Reeves and Favre aren’t targets, they’d almost certainly be considered material witnesses and compelled to cooperate with the probe.
