The past couple of years has revealed all kinds of grift using funds meant to help people in order to line various grifters’ pockets. Probably the highest profile grifter in recent memory is twice-impeached Donald Trump. The second-highest on that list is the Republican Party writ large. Lower down on that list are people like former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, John Davis, Nancy New, and retired Half of Fame NFL quarterback Brett Favre.
In 2016, then-Gov. Phil Bryant appointed John Davis to head the Mississippi Department of Human Services (DHS). In 2019, John Davis retired from the position. In 2020, it became clear that Davis retired from the position because he was guilty of helping illegally siphon off tens of millions of dollars in state welfare monies. Some of those illegal moves included non-profit scam artist Nancy New and former NFL quarterback Brett Favre. In 2020, the allegations against Favre were that he received $1.1 million in illegally shuffled social services money to make speeches he never ended up making. Favre very quickly announced he was dumb as a brick and had no idea this was happening and would pay back the money.
In the last year, more stories have come out implicating Favre and Davis and Favre’s buddy Gov. Phil Bryant, in the active defrauding of low-income Mississippi families, using DHS taxpayer money illegally, to build things like a volleyball stadium for University of Southern Mississippi, among other things. it also showed that Favre knew exactly where his speechifying fees were coming from. Guess what.
It gets worse.
RELATED STORY: Tick tock, Brett Favre: Former Mississippi DHS head pleads guilty to defrauding low-income families
Various news outlets are reporting that Brett Favre’s “Favre 4 Hope” charity, the one that fundraises money in order to distribute that money to "disadvantaged and disabled children and breast cancer patients," wasn’t simply working on getting corrupt Mississippi republican officials to help build his daughter’s alma mater a volleyball stadium. The charity reportedly sent more than $130,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation between 2018 and 2020.
ESPN spoke with Favre’s lawyer Bud Holmes who had this non-committal thing to say: "He has been very generous to Southern Miss since he played ball there. Those particular things [the donations in question] I don't know, but I know he has always given back, something most athletes don't do." Most athletes don’t involve themselves in big frauds? Most athletes don’t have access to big-time corrupt GOP officials? Not sure. We will have to find out what exactly Holmes may have meant by that.
The Athletic spoke with the COO of the National Council of Nonprofits, Rick Cohen, who said that while Favre might not have broken the law, he sort of seems to be a dubious person of sorts. “There’s the letter of the law, there’s the spirit of the law, and it’s something where it would probably be tough to make a legal case, but it still doesn’t look good. It isn’t unheard of for a nonprofit to expand its mission or change its mission over time if they find they need to redirect. That does not seem to be the case here.”
In the same years Favre was soliciting money to build the volleyball facility, his charitable foundation, which received public donations, significantly increased its contributions to USM’s athletic fundraising arm. Tax records show that Favre 4 Hope gave the USM Athletic Foundation $60,000 in 2018, when no other charity received more than $10,000. The next year, it gave $46,817; the next highest gift, to the Special Olympics of Mississippi, was $11,000. In 2020, Favre 4 Hope sent USM’s Athletic Foundation $26,175; no other organization received more than $10,000.
Tax records also show that in 2015, when Favre’s daughter was a volleyball player at Oak Grove High in Hattiesburg, the Favre 4 Hope foundation donated $60,000 to that school’s booster club, the largest grant made by Favre 4 Hope that year. The Oak Grove Booster Club subsequently granted $60,349 to the high school with the stated purpose being: “assist to build athletic facility.”
In the end, the privatization of social services in an inegalitarian society, leads to less transparency and more abuses by the handful of people that get to become the gatekeepers of “charity.” People giving money to Favre’s breast cancer and disadvantaged children charity are frequently giving that money because they themselves have been touched by these issues in intimate ways. The promise of relying on charity foundations instead of taxpayer programs has always been that the individuals donating know where their money is going. But they don’t, really.
Brett Favre, while a Hall of Fame football player, seems to be something of a fraudster criminal. And while people like Phil Bryant and Donald Trump may not be much for sports, they do seem to have a similar skill set to the former Greenbay Packer.
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Mississippi officials misused welfare money to build NFL Brett Favre's daughter a volleyball stadium
Republican-led Mississippi welfare fund paid Brett Favre $1.1 million for speeches he never gave