(Photo from Hinds Co. DA office)
- D.A. Jody Owens left the Southern Poverty Law Center amid accusations of sexual harassment, but with the help of left-leaning financier George Soros, was elected to serve as the top prosecutor in Mississippi’s most populous county. Now, Owens finds himself at the center of a bribery scandal rocking Jackson’s power structure.
“There’s only one of me.” According to federal prosecutors, that’s what Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens bragged when explaining that his ability to “prosecute people” gave him the political capital to get things done in Jackson. “Everybody needs something fixed.”
Owens is accused of receiving at least $115,000 in cash payments from undercover FBI operatives in exchange for facilitating at least $80,000 in bribe payments to Jackson elected officials, including Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba. The object of the alleged conspiracy was the approval of a hotel project near the Jackson Convention Center. (A copy of the indictment is embedded below).
The FBI investigation that yielded the recent indictment began last fall under President Biden’s Department of Justice. The prosecution of the case is being handled by Biden’s appointed U.S. Attorney, Todd Gee, who got his start with Congressman Bennie Thompson (D).
When Gee’s office unsealed the indictment against Owens, Lumumba, and Jackson City Council member Aaron Banks last week, it contained a treasure trove of alleged quotes from Owens more reminiscent of Tony Soprano than Clarence Darrow.
Owens purportedly told the FBI operatives he had “a bag of f–king information on all the city councilmen” that allowed him to “get votes approved.”
(The image has been enhanced to encircle what appears to be a large stack of banded cash).
According to the indicment, at a re-election victory party last November, Owens’ said being District Attorney was a “part-time” job that allowed him to “get leverage for the full-time job.” He told the operatives, being D.A. got the “conversations and the access. Access equals the other sh-t we’re trying to do.”
The indictment also paints a picture of contempt held by Owens for the council members he was allegedly bribing. In one reported exchange, he compared them to drug addicts who could not be trusted with full payment all at once. He colorfully suggested Councilman Banks should be low balled:
“We never give them the asking price. I buy p–sy, I buy cars, I buy cows, I buy drugs, whatever,” Owens allegedly told the FBI operatives. “My point is, like [Banks] need 50, you get 30. He gets installments.”
As time neared to make the alleged bribery payment to Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Owens is said to have told the undercover FBI assets that he would place the cash in a safe in the District Attorney’s Office, co-mingling the funds with “a million dollars” of state’s evidence, including what he described as “dope money.”
Owens did not care where the bribe money came from, understood it was his job to “clean” and distribute it, and understood what he was doing to be legally dubious, according to the indictment.
“I don’t give a sh-t where the money comes from. It can come from blood diamonds in Africa… We can take dope boy money, I don’t give a sh-t. But I need to clean it and spread it,” Owens reportedly said. “Here’s the thing, at the end of the f–king day, my most important job is to keep everybody out of jail or prison, because I’m not f–king going.”
Owens downplayed these and other statements following his arraignment last Thursday, describing them as “drunken locker-room banter.” For his role in the alleged bribery conspiracy, Owens now faces 8 federal charges, up to 90 years in prison and up to $2 million in fines. He’s pled ‘not guilty.’
The Southern Poverty Law Origin Story
But how did Owens come to hold this position of influence? Owens’ rise to power took an untraditional path for a district attorney. Prior to running for the office, he had no real prosecutorial experience.
Instead, beginning in 2011, Owens oversaw the operation of the Mississippi Office of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as Chief Policy Counsel and Managing Attorney.
SPLC, a Montgomery, Ala. based organization with over a half-billion dollar endowment, built a reputation on fighting for civil rights and pushing back against the Ku Klux Klan in the South.
The organization faced scrutiny in recent years, however, as it expanded its targeted “hate groups” to include many mainstream conservative and Christian organizations.
In 2017, Politico acknowledged the growing criticism that SPLC is “becoming more of a partisan progressive hit operation than a civil rights watchdog.” Shikha Dalmia, President of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, said “the SPLC is not up to the task” of monitoring actual hate groups because “[i]t is too busy enforcing liberal orthodoxy against its intellectual opponents.” The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel called SPLC a “far-left activist group” that “exists to smear conservatives.”
SPLC’s former editor-in-chief of the Intelligence Report, Mark Potok, has said, “sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on…. I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.”
According to Alliance Defending Freedom, a public interest law firm that SPLC identifies as a “hate group,” other groups and individuals identified by SPLC include Ben Carson, The Federalist Society, Franklin Graham, Focus on the Family, American College of Pediatricians, Catholic Medical Association, Heritage Foundation, and Family Research Council, among others. In Mississippi, the American Family Association and Moms for Liberty have been included.
In 2012, the identification of the Family Research Council led to a gunman attempting to infiltrate their headquarters. In the process, a security guard that subdued the would-be killer, Floyd Corkins, was shot. Corkins later told authorities that he selected the Family Research Council because of its inclusion on SPLC’s list and that he “planned to stride into the building and open fire on the people inside in an effort to kill as many as possible.”
Trouble Within
In March of 2019, SPLC announced the firing of its co-founder and chief trial counsel Morris Dees, amid swirling accusations of sexual harrassment, sexism, and racial discrimination within the organization, itself. The departure of several key executives followed.
Shortly after Dees’ dismissal, one of Owens’ subordinates filed her own sexual discrimination claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Appeal, a left-leaning publication wrote an exposé on the complaint, and additional allegations brought against Owens during his tenure at SPLC:
“In the complaint, the woman describes a number of instances, starting in November 2018, where Owens made unsolicited comments about her body and touched her without consent. On one occasion, Owens invited her to dinner with members of his family and she said she felt compelled to attend because of his stature as leader of the office.”
“While at dinner, Mr. Owens reached under the table and touched [the woman]’s thigh and calf,” according to Appeal’s reporting of the complaint. “[The woman] recoiled, but he persisted; Mr. Owens continued to touch her leg under the table throughout the meal despite her attempts to shift away.”
Owens denied the accusations, according to Appeal, writing in an email, “I have never condoned nor participated in any unwanted behavior or touching of any kind with an employee.”
In total, Appeal interviewed 17 women that worked with Owens at SPLC and reported that multiple women “say he sexually harassed them while he led the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Jackson office.” “Ten of the interviewees said they had experienced, witnessed, or knew about his harassment of subordinate female employees,” according to the publication.
The Appeal investigation also addressed the internal handling of the complaint at SPLC:
“According to the complaint, the woman reported the harassment to Lisa Graybill, the SPLC’s deputy legal director of criminal justice reform, and Twyla Williams, the director of human resources. Graybill and Williams did not respond to requests for comment. The SPLC declined to comment, citing its policy of keeping personnel matters confidential.
Williams arranged for a third-party investigation, according to the complaint, and outside attorneys interviewed the woman. In June, she was told that investigators found her allegations credible, but Owens was not disciplined to her knowledge, and he resigned on June 28.”
Enter George Soros
Just weeks after departing SPLC, on July 17, 2019, left-leaning financier George Soros gave half a million dollars to a Mississippi-based PAC called the “Mississippi Justice & Safety PAC.”
Soros’ donation marked the sole source of revenue for the PAC and Owens was the only candidate who received any support from the PAC during the 2019 cycle, according to records maintained by the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office.
Over $294,000 was returned to Soros after Owens won the race.
Once in office, new allegations emerged. In 2022, Capitol Police were called to the apartment of Owens’ Chief of Staff Samantha Grant, arriving shortly after midnight. Joshua Towns told police he had been visiting Grant when Owens entered the apartment and pointed a gun at him. The incident report reflected a “simple assault” complaint. The matter was never prosecuted, but raised questions about the nature of Owens’ relationship with his subordinate.
Owens was the third Mississippi District Attorney to receive Soros’ support, with donations in a previous election cycle to former Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith, now deceased, and Scott Colom, a sitting District Attorney from the Columbus area.
In the 2015 election cycle, Soros was the sole funder to the closely named “Mississippi Safety & Justice PAC,” donating nearly $1 million to support Colom’s bid for D.A. in the 16th Judicial District and Shuler-Smith’s re-election bid in Hinds County.
Colom received the lion’s share of the benefit, with over $700,000 in “independent expenditures” made on his behalf by the PAC. He successfully knocked off a nearly 30-year incumbent, Forrest Allgood, in the process.
Colom has since been nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as a U.S. District Court judge. However, the Senate has not acted to confirm the nomination.
Shuler-Smith was first elected in 2007 with the support of former Mayor Frank Melton and former Hinds County District Attorney Ed Peters. Peters was subsequetly tied up in his own bribery and public corruption case — one that saw his law license revoked and Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter sent to prison.
Shuler-Smith ultimately was charged with multiple crimes of his own, ranging from receiving payments to fix drug cases to aggravated robbery and domestic assault. He faced three separate criminal trials, but avoided any conviction.
Soros’ investments in Mississippi are part of a broader strategy to remake America’s legal system. Other high profile beneficiaries of his support include Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who recently prosecuted President-Elect Donald Trump for felony falsification of business records.
According to a 2022 report released by the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF), the U.S. currently has “at least 75 Soros-backed social justice prosecutors supported through campaign dollars and/or Soros-funded progresssive infrastructure groups.”
The “Justice for Sale” report says these prosecutors “represent more than 1 in 5 Americans, or more than 72 million people, including half of America’s 50 most populous cities and counties,” and over 40 percent of our nation’s homicides.
As of 2022, the LELDF’s records of Soros’ spending showed “more than $40 million on direct campaign spending over the past decade to elect prosecutors.”
