Mississippi Today

Court filing alleges Gov. Phil Bryant directed welfare funds for illegal volleyball and concussion drug projects

Published

1 year ago

December 19, 2023

For the first time in a court filing, a key defendant in the Mississippi welfare scandal is alleging that former Gov. Phil Bryant was behind the use of welfare agency grant funds for two projects now deemed illegal.

The nonprofit founded by Nancy New, one of the central figures of the scheme, is alleging that Bryant was involved in directing welfare funds towards the construction of a volleyball stadium and a pharmaceutical startup company — two projects former NFL quarterback Brett Favre lobbied officials to support. Favre has also alleged that Bryant supported the nonprofit’s payments to the two ventures.

“Based on the foregoing, as well as evidence that will be presented at trial, Bryant was involved, both directly and indirectly, in directing, approving, facilitating, and/or furthering MDHS’s use of federal grant funds for Prevacus and for construction of the USM volleyball center,” reads a Dec. 12 court filing by Mississippi Community Education Center’s attorney Gerry Bufkin.

Bryant has previously denied involvement in the use of welfare funds for either project. Through his attorney, Bryant declined to answer questions about the allegations made in the Dec. 12 filing. Bryant, who is suing Mississippi Today for defamation, has sent threats to the news outlet for continuing to report this story, including basic updates about public court documents.

The court filing also details how at least some of the welfare money sent to the concussion drug company Prevacus may have actually ended up in the hands of scammers in Ghana.

New is one of eight criminal defendants and 47 civil defendants that Mississippi Department of Human Services is suing in an attempt to recoup $77 million in stolen or misspent federal funds.

Last year, New alleged in a filing that Bryant instructed her to make a $1.1 million payment directly to Favre, but this is the first time she or her nonprofit have alleged Bryant was behind payments to the other Favre projects.

Mississippi Community Education Center’s 81-page answer to the complaint, filed Dec. 12, alleges that Bryant conferred with then-agency director John Davis to channel agency grant funds towards the projects, but that the state has purposefully left the former governor out of the lawsuit. The filing also argues that the welfare department has been exploiting flexibility in federal law around state spending since the inception of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in 1996.

“By omitting Bryant, and by attempting to disavow Davis, MDHS seeks to distance itself from its 25-year course of performance in relation to TANF and other grant expenditures,” the filing reads.

This is a similar argument to those made by other defendants such as Favre, fitness trainer Paul Lacoste and the nephew of the former welfare director.

The timeline

The latest court filing contains a lengthy timeline of Bryant’s alleged involvement in the Favre projects using texts and documents, most of which have been previously produced in court or published by Mississippi Today.

The relevant messages include texts New has produced between herself and Favre and Bryant; texts Bryant produced between himself and Favre; texts Vanlandingham produced between himself, Bryant and Favre and other associates.

The texts contain gaps that defendant testimony — which has not yet been gathered — may fill. Mississippi Community Education Center’s latest filing contains references to records and unspecified “evidence that will be presented at trial” to back up its claims against the former governor.

The following is an abbreviated timeline of the events as described in the court document. It reflects only Mississippi Community Education Center’s side of the story, and Bryant is not a defendant in the case.

Nov. 1, 1996: Phil Bryant became Mississippi’s State Auditor, the same year Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which replaced the former entitlement cash welfare program with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant.

Jan. 11, 2016: Elected governor four years earlier, Bryant appointed John Davis as the director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services.

April 20, 2017: Favre first texted Bryant to say that he was working to build a volleyball facility on University of Southern Mississippi’s campus, and “I need your influence somehow to get donations and or sponsorships.”

July 2017: Favre again asked for the governor’s help, texting, “you are the governor and on our side and that’s a good thing.” The governor communicated with Davis, the filing alleges. Davis then met with Favre, New and others at USM, where Davis committed $4 million to the project.

August 2017: USM would not immediately accept the funds. Favre contacted Bryant for help, the filing alleges, then Bryant contacted New. New texted Favre, “Wow, just got off phone with Phil Bryant! He is on board with us! We will get this done!” Days later, USM accepted the grant funds after someone arranged a deal that the university could take $1 million of it for its own improvement projects.

September 2017: Worried about a funding shortfall for the volleyball facility, Favre again contacted the governor, the court filing alleges “based on information and belief.” “I saw the Governor last night,” New texted Favre. “It’s all going to work out.” Soon after, the filing alleges, the welfare agency increased its commitment from $4 million to $5 million.

May 2018: Construction again faced a funding shortfall. Favre reached out to Bryant, texts show. One week later, the project received additional funding. “Good News. I have a little money for the ‘project’ – $500,000!” New texted Favre.

October-December 2018: Favre and Vanlandingham, the Prevacus founder, had been in talks with a Mississippi-based investor group, but the deal fell through after the group asked for 95% shares in the company, with no cash investment, solely for them to use their “political clout” to secure FDA approval. So they reached out to Bryant. They offered him stock in the company. All three, in addition to others, met for dinner at Walker’s Drive-In to discuss opportunities for the company. Mississippi Today has reported on this meeting and the text exchanges surrounding it.

January-June 2019: Days after the Walker’s meeting, welfare officials met at Favre’s house and agreed on a $1.7 million grant for Prevacus. Vanlandingham texted the governor to express his excitement about working with his welfare officials. “1.95M with the Governors help,” Vanlandingham texted another Mississippi official and potential investor, according to the court filing. New began sending payments to Prevacus and Favre informed the governor of the cash flow. Vanlandingham, Favre and Bryant texted continually about Prevacus business developments. Read more in Mississippi Today’s series “The Backchannel.”

June 11, 2019: Vanlandingham met Gov. Tate Reeves, then a candidate for governor, in New Orleans. Discussing the meeting with other Prevacus board members, Vanlandingham said, “I’m meeting the governor and who he’s supporting to take his place in Mississippi. Hoping to keep that non-dilute running our way!!!” Read more in Mississippi Today’s October article.

June 21, 2019: Bryant received a tip about Davis allegedly committing fraud, which he turned over to State Auditor Shad White, effectively forcing Davis out of office.

July 2, 2019: Bryant met with New, the court filing alleges. “MDHS owed reimbursements to MCEC and New told Bryant she could no longer fund Prevacus and volleyball without the reimbursements,” the filing reads.

July 12, 2019: New texted Vanlandingham, “we can send 400k today [but] I will need to let Brett know that we will need to pull this from what we were hoping to help him with [volleyball]….” (MDHS’s civil complaint says the money was delivered on July 16, 2019.)

July 16, 2019: New texted Favre, “I may not be able to assist you in Aug. as we had planned.” Favre responded, “About to see Governor Bryant.” Favre, on his way to see the governor, texted Bryant, “I really need your help with Nancy and Jake.” Bryant responded, “You my man… we are all in….” After seeing Favre, Bryant texted New, “Just left Brett Favre. Can we help him with his project. We should meet soon to see how I can make sure we keep your projects on course.”

July 22, 2019: New submitted a grant proposal to MDHS for $2 million in additional funds to finish construction on the volleyball stadium.

August 8, 2019: Bryant texted New, “Meeting with Brett in a few. Have the proposal and working it through DHS.” Bryant and Favre met. Favre texted New that they had met about something else, and “he only had 15 minutes but he did say at the end that he will get this done with you!!!”

August-November 2019: Bryant, Favre and New worked together to try to usher the volleyball proposal through MDHS, the court filing alleges. “Bryant, using Favre as intermediary, told New how to revise the grant proposal to ‘get it accepted,’” the filing alleges. Favre texted New, “He said to me just a second ago that he has seen it but hint hint that you need to reword it to get it accepted.” Bryant secured a meeting for New and Favre with then-director Christopher Freeze to discuss the proposal. Later on, Bryant told Freeze he supported the project. Read more here.

December 2019: After a meeting between Bryant and New, the court filing alleges, the welfare agency awarded New’s nonprofit three new grants totaling $8.6 million. Bryant texts New, “Did y’all get any Of the new programs from DHS?” New responded, “Yes, we did … Someone was definitely pulling for us behind the scenes. Thank you,” to which Bryant responded with a smiley face emoji.

January 2020: Favre and Vanlandingham discussed offering Bryant a package – either stock or cash – ”that will get him determined to see [Prevacus] through.” After Bryant left office on Jan. 15, 2020, Vanlandingham texted Bryant the next day, “Now that you’re unemployed I’d like to give you a company package for all your help … we want you on our team!!!” Bryant responded, “Sounds good. Where would be the best place to meet.”

Feb. 5, 2020: John Davis, Nancy New and four others “were arrested for spending grant funds as directed, approved, facilitated, and/or furthered by MDHS, including, without limitation, the MDHS Executives, Bryant, and Davis,” the filing reads.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Meet Willye B. White: A Mississippian we should all celebrate

Published

24 hours ago

April 4, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @rick_cleveland – 2025-04-04 11:09:00

by Rick Cleveland, Mississippi Today
April 4, 2025

In an interview years and years ago, the late Willye B. White told me in her warm, soothing Delta voice, “A dream without a plan is just a wish. As a young girl, I had a plan.”

She most definitely did have a plan. And she executed said plan, as we shall see.

And I know what many readers are thinking: “Who the heck was Willye B. White?” That, or: “Willye B. White, where have I heard that name before?”

Rick Cleveland

Well, you might have driven an eight-mile, flat-as-a-pancake stretch of U.S. 49E, between Sidon and Greenwood, and seen the marker that says: “Willye B. White Memorial Highway.” Or you might have visited the Olympic Room at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and seen where White was a five-time participant and two-time medalist in the Summer Olympics as a jumper and a sprinter.

If you don’t know who Willye B. White was, you should. Every Mississippian should. So pour yourself a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea, follow along and prepare to be inspired.

Willye B. White was born on the last day of 1939 in Money, near Greenwood, and was raised by grandparents. As a child, she picked cotton to help feed her family. When she wasn’t picking cotton, she was running, really fast, and jumping, really high and really long distances.

She began competing in high school track and field meets at the age of 10. At age 11, she scored enough points in a high school meet to win the competition all by herself. At age 16, in 1956, she competed in the Summer Olympics at Melbourne, Australia.

Her plan then was simple. The Olympics, on the other side of the world, would take place in November. “I didn’t know much about the Olympics, but I knew that if I made the team and I went to the Olympics, I wouldn’t have to pick cotton that year. I was all for that.”

Just imagine. You are 16 years old, a high school sophomore, a poor Black girl. You are from Money, Mississippi, and you walk into the stadium at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds to compete before a crowd of more than 100,000 strangers nearly 10,000 miles from your home.

She competed in the long jump. She won the silver medal to become the first-ever American to win a medal in that event. And then she came home to segregated Mississippi, to little or no fanfare. This was the year after Emmett Till, a year younger than White, was brutally murdered just a short distance from where she lived.

“I used to sit in those cotton fields and watch the trains go by,” she once told an interviewer. “I knew they were going to some place different, some place into the hills and out of those cotton fields.”

Her grandfather had fought in France in World War I. “He told me about all the places he saw,” White said. “I always wanted to travel and see the places he talked about.”

Travel, she did. In the late 1950s there were two colleges that offered scholarships to young, Black female track and field athletes. One was Tuskegee in Alabama, the other was Tennessee State in Nashville. White chose Tennessee State, she said, “because it was the farthest away from those cotton fields.”

She was getting started on a track and field career that would take her, by her own count, to 150 different countries across the globe. She was the best female long jumper in the U.S. for two decades. She competed in Olympics in Melbourne, Rome, Tokyo, Mexico City and Munich. She would compete on more than 30 U.S. teams in international events. In 1999, Sports Illustrated named her one of the top 100 female athletes of the 20th century.

Chicago became White’s home for most of adulthood. This was long before Olympic athletes were rich, making millions in endorsements and appearance fees. She needed a job, so she became a nurse. Later on, she became an public health administrator as well as a coach. She created the Willye B. White Foundation to help needy children with health and after school care.

In 1982, at age 42, she returned to Mississippi to be inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and was welcomed back to a reception at the Governor’s Mansion by Gov. William Winter, who introduced her during induction ceremonies. Twenty-six years after she won the silver medal at Melbourne, she called being hosted and celebrated by the governor of her home state “the zenith of her career.”

Willye B. White died of pancreatic cancer in a Chicago hospital in 2007. While working on an obituary/column about her, I talked to the late, great Ralph Boston, the three-time Olympic long jump medalist from Laurel. They were Tennessee State and U.S. Olympic teammates. They shared a healthy respect from one another, and Boston clearly enjoyed talking about White.

At one point, Ralph asked me, “Did you know Willye B. had an even more famous high school classmate.”

No, I said, I did not.

“Ever heard of Morgan Freeman?” Ralph said, laughing.

Of course.

“I was with Morgan one time and I asked him if he ever ran track,” Ralph said, already chuckling about what would come next.

“Morgan said he did not run track in high school because he knew if he ran, he’d have to run against Willye B. White, and Morgan said he didn’t want to lose to a girl.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Mississippi Today

Early voting proposal killed on last day of Mississippi legislative session

Published

2 days ago

April 3, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-03 13:02:00

by Taylor Vance, Mississippi Today
April 3, 2025

Mississippi will remain one of only three states without no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting.

Senate leaders, on the last day of their regular 2025 session, decided not to send a bill to Gov. Tate Reeves that would have expanded pre-Election Day voting options. The governor has been vocally opposed to early voting in Mississippi, and would likely have vetoed the measure.

The House and Senate this week overwhelmingly voted for legislation that established a watered-down version of early voting. The proposal would have required voters to go to a circuit clerk’s office and verify their identity with a photo ID.

The proposal also listed broad excuses that would have allowed many voters an opportunity to cast early ballots.

The measure passed the House unanimously and the Senate approved it 42-7. However, Sen. Jeff Tate, a Republican from Meridian who strongly opposes early voting, held the bill on a procedural motion.

Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England chose not to dispose of Tate’s motion on Thursday morning, the last day the Senate was in session. This killed the bill and prevented it from going to the governor.

England, a Republican from Vancleave, told reporters he decided to kill the legislation because he believed some of its language needed tweaking.

The other reality is that Republican Gov. Tate Reeves strongly opposes early voting proposals and even attacked England on social media for advancing the proposal out of the Senate chamber.

England said he received word “through some sources” that Reeves would veto the measure.

“I’m not done working on it, though,” England said.

Although Mississippi does not have no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting, it does have absentee voting.

To vote by absentee, a voter must meet one of around a dozen legal excuses, such as temporarily living outside of their county or being over 65. Mississippi law doesn’t allow people to vote by absentee purely out of convenience or choice.

Several conservative states, such as Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida, have an in-person early voting system. The Republican National Committee in 2023 urged Republican voters to cast an early ballot in states that have early voting procedures.

Yet some Republican leaders in Mississippi have ardently opposed early voting legislation over concerns that it undermines election security.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Mississippi Today

Mississippi Legislature approves DEI ban after heated debate

Published

3 days ago

April 2, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-02 16:34:00

by Michael Goldberg, Mississippi Today
April 2, 2025

Mississippi lawmakers have reached an agreement to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from public schools across the state education system, following the lead of numerous other Republican-controlled states and President Donald Trump’s administration.

House and Senate lawmakers approved a compromise bill in votes on Tuesday and Wednesday. It will likely head to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves for his signature after it clears a procedural motion.

The agreement between the Republican-dominated chambers followed hours of heated debate in which Democrats, almost all of whom are Black, excoriated the legislation as a setback in the long struggle to make Mississippi a fairer place for minorities. They also said the bill could bog universities down with costly legal fights and erode academic freedom.

Democratic Rep. Bryant Clark, who seldom addresses the entire House chamber from the podium during debates, rose to speak out against the bill on Tuesday. He is the son of the late Robert Clark, the first Black Mississippian elected to the state Legislature since the 1800s and the first Black Mississippian to serve as speaker pro tempore and preside over the House chamber since Reconstruction.

“We are better than this, and all of you know that we don’t need this with Mississippi history,” Clark said. “We should be the ones that say, ‘listen, we may be from Mississippi, we may have a dark past, but you know what, we’re going to be the first to stand up this time and say there is nothing wrong with DEI.'”

Legislative Republicans argued that the measure — which will apply to all public schools from the K-12 level through universities — will elevate merit in education and remove a list of so-called “divisive concepts” from academic settings. More broadly, conservative critics of DEI say the programs divide people into categories of victims and oppressors and infuse left-wing ideology into campus life.

“We are a diverse state. Nowhere in here are we trying to wipe that out,” said Republican Sen. Tyler McCaughn, one of the bill’s authors. “We’re just trying to change the focus back to that of excellence.”

The House and Senate initially passed proposals that differed in who they would impact, what activities they would regulate and how they aim to reshape the inner workings of the state’s education system. Some House leaders wanted the bill to be “semi-vague” in its language and wanted to create a process for withholding state funds based on complaints that almost anyone could lodge. The Senate wanted to pair a DEI ban with a task force to study inefficiencies in the higher education system, a provision the upper chamber later agreed to scrap.

The concepts that will be rooted out from curricula include the idea that gender identity can be a “subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality.” The move reflects another effort to align with the Trump administration, which has declared via executive order that there are only two sexes.

The House and Senate disagreed on how to enforce the measure but ultimately settled on an agreement that would empower students, parents of minor students, faculty members and contractors to sue schools for violating the law.

People could only sue after they go through an internal campus review process and a 25-day period when schools could fix the alleged violation. Republican Rep. Joey Hood, one of the House negotiators, said that was a compromise between the chambers. The House wanted to make it possible for almost anyone to file lawsuits over the DEI ban, while Senate negotiators initially bristled at the idea of fast-tracking internal campus disputes to the legal system.

The House ultimately held firm in its position to create a private cause of action, or the right to sue, but it agreed to give schools the ability to conduct an investigative process and potentially resolve the alleged violation before letting people sue in chancery courts.

“You have to go through the administrative process,” said Republican Sen. Nicole Boyd, one of the bill’s lead authors. “Because the whole idea is that, if there is a violation, the school needs to cure the violation. That’s what the purpose is. It’s not to create litigation, it’s to cure violations.”

If people disagree with the findings from that process, they could also ask the attorney general’s office to sue on their behalf.

Under the new law, Mississippi could withhold state funds from schools that don’t comply. Schools would be required to compile reports on all complaints filed in response to the new law.

Trump promised in his 2024 campaign to eliminate DEI in the federal government. One of the first executive orders he signed did that. Some Mississippi lawmakers introduced bills in the 2024 session to restrict DEI, but the proposals never made it out of committee. With the national headwinds at their backs and several other laws in Republican-led states to use as models, Mississippi lawmakers made plans to introduce anti-DEI legislation.

The policy debate also unfolded amid the early stages of a potential Republican primary matchup in the 2027 governor’s race between State Auditor Shad White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. White, who has been one of the state’s loudest advocates for banning DEI, had branded Hosemann in the months before the 2025 session “DEI Delbert,” claiming the Senate leader has stood in the way of DEI restrictions passing the Legislature.

During the first Senate floor debate over the chamber’s DEI legislation during this year’s legislative session, Hosemann seemed to be conscious of these political attacks. He walked over to staff members and asked how many people were watching the debate live on YouTube.

As the DEI debate cleared one of its final hurdles Wednesday afternoon, the House and Senate remained at loggerheads over the state budget amid Republican infighting. It appeared likely the Legislature would end its session Wednesday or Thursday without passing a $7 billion budget to fund state agencies, potentially threatening a government shutdown.

“It is my understanding that we don’t have a budget and will likely leave here without a budget. But this piece of legislation …which I don’t think remedies any of Mississippi’s issues, this has become one of the top priorities that we had to get done,” said Democratic Sen. Rod Hickman. “I just want to say, if we put that much work into everything else we did, Mississippi might be a much better place.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.