By Joel Thurtell
The buzz in the barbershop last week was all Monica and Jewel.
From reading the newspapers, you might think Detroit City Council President Monica Conyers was as good as behind bars.
And that Wayne County Commissioner Jewel Ware was nigh onto being convicted.
But headlines don’t, all by themselves, make criminal convictions.
If history is a bellwether, Jewel and Monica might lighten up.
Why did the FBI seize Jewel’s records?
Well, it seems maybe she assigned county employees to work in her restaurant while they were supposedly paid to do government work.
But hasn’t this been a hallowed tradition in Detroit since U.S. Rep. Charles Diggs assigned congressional workers from his Detroit district office to work in his family’s funeral home?
Actually, Diggs wound up convicted of fraud. He spent time in federal prison.
But there’s a more instructive example from recent history that should comfort Jewel and Monica, who’s being investigated in a Detroit City Hall pay-to-play, contracts-for-bribes scheme.
Ease of mind might come from the case of Monica’s husband, U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., who ritually assigned federally-paid office workers both from Detroit and Washington, D.C., to work on his and other people’s campaigns in violation of federal ethics rules and federal laws. He also assigned staffers to babysit and tutor his kids, tutor Monica for law school and act as his personal chauffeur, all while the workers were being paid by the government.
Detroit Free Press reporter Chris Christoff and I outlined John Conyers’ long-ingrained habit of misusing congressional staffers in a set of Free Press stories on November 21, 2003. We described how Conyers was having staffers do campaign work, and in subsequent stories, I reported on Conyers’s penchant for assigning staffers to do his personal work on government time.
Six years later, I’m still waiting for the Justice Department to investigate John Conyers.
But the Justice Department with huge fanfare did investigate pay-to-play and illegal campaign work in the administration of Wayne County Executive Ed McNamara. True, Mac died, but he wasn’t the only big fish swimming in that cesspool.
The FBI raid on Mac’s office took place late in 2002. I’m still waiting for key players to be indicted.
Because McNamara died, apparently, the case was dropped.
Take it easy, Jewel.
John Conyers is still very much alive.
And he’s still in Congress.
He’s chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
That’s a congressional panel that oversees the Justice Department.
The Justice Department runs the FBI.
Take it easy, Monica.
Oh, by the way, doesn’t it seem like John Conyers ought to step down as chairman of Judiciary while there’s a federal cloud over his wife?
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
That was some game of connect the dots you just played! But how long do you think he can protect his wife?
“JC”, as he likes to be called, will be able to protect his wife as long as he protects all of the other corrupt folks who are lining their pockets with Detroit’s taxpayer dollars as Chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee which controls the funding of the U.S. Justice Department.