Florida congresswoman Corrine Brown and her chief of staff were recently indicted for fraud. Prosecutors allege Brown and chief of staff Ronnie Simmons used a charity as a personal slush fund to pay for things like the “use of luxury boxes for an NFL game and a Beyoncé concert.”
Both have pleaded not guilty, and Brown has gone so far as to claim persecution.
Brown is no stranger to fraud allegations, as our own Stephen F. Hayes reported in a story about her in 2000.
A few key excerpts:
In that [1992] campaign, Brown disregarded or disobeyed numerous campaign finance laws by misplacing, misallocating, and misreporting tens of thousands of dollars. Among her violations: failing to report use of a corporate plane, using money from a non-federal campaign account, accepting donations from foreign citizens, accepting donations from corporations, failing to account for numerous disbursements, and failing to report $81,000 in contributions before the election. Just last month, Brown escaped punishment on bribery suspicions. After key witnesses fled the country, members of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct concluded, “Representative Brown’s actions and associations . . . demonstrated, at the least, poor judgement and created substantial concerns regarding both the appearance of impropriety and the reputation of the House of Representatives.” The charges involved her lobbying of the Clinton administration and her congressional colleagues on behalf of Gambian businessman Foutanga Sissoko, who has been convicted of bribing U.S. Customs officials. Three months after Brown penned a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno to plead for leniency for Sissoko, her daughter Shantrel received a $ 50,000 Lexus from the chief financial officer of Sissoko’s company. And there’s more. So much more. * She knowingly employed a convicted murderer on her congressional staff. * She paid $ 5,000 to settle a dispute with the Florida Ethics Commission. She never admitted any guilt. But, as a state representative, she had, for three years, paid a state salary to a full-time employee of her travel agency. The employee, Betty Ann Howard, confirmed the charges. * She paid a congressional salary to a “jazz singer” living in New York City. The singer admitted she had no legislative duties, but did sometimes travel to the district (at government expense) to sing to constituents. * She claimed a tax exemption for a home outside her district, despite the fact that the Florida Constitution requires state representatives to live in the district they represent. Meanwhile, the exemption requires that the property be “occupied.”
Hayes observed: “[T]he details of Brown’s history of malfeasance would fill this magazine, and take up much of the next issue, too…” and wrote that a past opponent had been reluctant to exploit her past.
Read the rest of Hayes’s story here.
