Kilpatrick used re-election fund to pay legal defense

M.L. ELRICK Detroit Free Press
http://tinyurl.com/c7otu3

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick used his re-election fund to pay lawyers nearly $1 million for their ultimately futile efforts to keep him in office — and out of jail.

Kilpatrick’s lead attorney, James Thomas, defended tapping the campaign account but Maurice Kellman, a retired Wayne State University law professor, said it was improper.

A spokesman for state Attorney General Mike Cox said late today that such matters are typically referred to local prosecutors. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy’s spokeswoman Maria Miller declined comment on the legality of tapping the fund, but said prosecutors will look at the $215,000 that Kilpatrick said he had left in the fund at the end of 2008.

“We’re interested in any money that can go toward the mayor’s restitution,” she said.

Other details that emerged from the campaign finance report — which was filed nearly two months late — show that Kilpatrick received only six contributions after the Free Press revealed the text message scandal in January 2008.

No one contributed to the fund after Worthy brought eight felony counts against Kilpatrick in March 2008.

So many things are pending whith the Kwamster. When will someone finally indict the dumbass.

Boy, can the Free Press write one story about the Kwame scandal without mentioning within the first five paragraphs that it was their paper that exposed the text messages? To be sure, they are to be commended for what they did, but the back-patting gets really old after awhile.