It would mark the harshest punishment for public corruption in U.S. history, but the truth is no one deserves it more than Kwame Kilpatrick. If this were the Olympics, he’d get the gold. If it were the Tour de France he’d wear the yellow jersey. Even among today’s dirty politicians, Kilpatrick sticks out among the pack, even compared to the Louisiana congressman (William Jefferson) busted with a $100,000 cash bribe in his freezer!
Convicted of 24 corruption charges, Kilpatrick operated monstrous extortion, kickback and bribery schemes in which virtually all parts of city government were up for grabs for the right price. He also lived the high life on taxpayer dime, charging hundreds of thousands of dollars on city-issued credit cards for pro football tickets, fancy spas and restaurants, rock concerts and family trips to Las Vegas. Kilpatrick even had taxpayers pick up the $42,000 tab to lease two luxury vehicles for his wife and he put his friends and relatives on the city payroll.
But the single transgression Kilpatrick is most famous for involves lying under oath and billing his constituents north of $8 million to cover up an extramarital affair with a city staffer. Cops on the mayor’s security team were forced out of their job for raising questions about the affair and the city kept the wrongfully terminated officers quiet with an $8.4 million settlement. Kilpatrick and city-paid lawyers masterminded the secret deal, but two local newspapers got wind of it and obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act.
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