Overview
- Monday, former Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and ex–City Council President Aaron Banks changed their pleas to guilty on a single conspiracy count and will be sentenced on Oct. 15.
- The charges stem from a 2022 FBI undercover operation in which agents posed as developers seeking a downtown convention-center hotel and prosecutors say Lumumba accepted $50,000 disguised as five $10,000 campaign checks in exchange for moving a project deadline.
- Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens had pleaded guilty on June 29 and resigned after prosecutors say he solicited at least $115,000 from the undercover agents and funneled more than $80,000 to city officials.
- Investigators gathered videotaped conversations, photos of cash and check exchanges, and bank records that prosecutors cited in indictments, but several pieces of recorded evidence and potential testimony will not be used at trial because of the plea deals.
- The guilty pleas have intensified questions about local trust, prompted professional discipline moves against Owens, and are likely to shape how federal prosecutors pursue public-corruption cases and witnesses in the Southern District of Mississippi.