With the help of Phil Bryant’s own words in candid, never-before-published conversations, Mississippi Today’s series “The Backchannel” uncovers the depth of the former governor’s involvement within a sprawling welfare scandal that plagued his administration.
Each story in the series will delve into an aspect of Bryant’s entanglement with the welfare agency’s spending — whether the ties to his personal business dealings, his relationships with players in the scheme, patterns in his leadership, agency directives or nepotism.
While he was Mississippi’s governor, the welfare department that Bryant oversaw misused and squandered at least $77 million in federal funds meant to assist the state’s poorest residents — and so far he’s skirted all accountability.
This scheme wasn’t confined to a rogue government employee forging checks.
It was the inevitable outcome inside a public assistance office that had distorted its supposed mission to uplift people in poverty, while throwing tens of millions of welfare dollars at pie-in-the-sky plans with virtually no oversight.
The diversion of the funds away from the needy happened largely through sanctioned government processes — whether by the state agency or a private nonprofit — and in many cases with permission and in broad daylight.
The head of that system was Phil Bryant.
“I’ll take my responsibility,” Bryant told Mississippi Today in a three-hour interview on April 2. “Yeah, I was the governor. I wish I had been able to catch it. The moment I did, I called in the state auditor.”
Since the auditor arrested Bryant’s appointed director in 2020, state and federal investigators and prosecutors have failed to publicly scrutinize the governor’s role — which is palpable in written communication they’ve possessed for more than two years. The state auditor, a former Bryant staffer and campaign manager who the former governor later appointed as auditor, said that he believed it was the welfare director’s duty to reject any improper requests from the governor, not the governor’s responsibility to know agency spending regulations.
Mississippi Today scoured thousands of pages of text messages gathered by law enforcement agents in the course of their investigation. The communications, shared with our news organization, were sent between some of the key players and during limited time periods. We also reviewed thousands of emails and agency documents we received through more than 80 public records requests. Mississippi Today analyzed these records and conducted dozens of interviews.
Together, the trove of documents reveals the ease with which Bryant wielded his influence over the funding decisions of his eager-to-please welfare director. It also shows the lengths Bryant was willing to go to help his friend and retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre, who was the inspiration behind more than $8 million in improper welfare payments.
The messages Mississippi Today obtained set a stage for the events that led to what state officials consider the largest public embezzlement scheme in state history. They also raise questions about whether any officials plan to hold him accountable — and what more may have occurred under Bryant’s watch that he didn’t discuss in writing.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.