Shad White seems to be walking a tightrope on the welfare scandal between aggressively going after the stolen and misspent millions and protecting Republican colleagues from political fallout or embarrassment over the scandal.
For the second time since Mississippi’s state auditor helped break the scandal in 2020, he has been guilty of being less than forthcoming about information that might reflect poorly on fellow Republican officeholders.
This time it was Tate Reeves, the incumbent governor in a tough reelection race, whom White appears to have been protecting. In 2020, it was Reeves’ predecessor, Phil Bryant.
White had been fighting Mississippi Today in court as late as last week over the release of text messages sent to him by Reeves’ brother, Todd, regarding the welfare scandal and the negative publicity it had created for former NFL quarterback Brett Favre, one of the beneficiaries of the misspending.
White’s argument was that the investigation was ongoing and release of the communications could compromise it. One day later, though, Tate Reeves’ campaign, in an effort possibly to preempt the story it knew was coming, voluntarily released the text messages that the state auditor wanted to keep under wraps.
In those messages, Todd Reeves, acting as an intermediary between Favre and White, asked that the state auditor say something nice about Favre when the former football star sent in his first installment on the $1.1 million that White demanded be repaid from improper use of welfare funds.
White complied, but he might have done so without Todd Reeves’ prompting.
More concerning than giving Favre a little cover was the auditor’s conscious decision to try to keep the intervention by the governor’s brother quiet. To what purpose?
We can’t see much in those texts that had any bearing on White’s investigation, all of which is now presumably in the hands of state and federal prosecutors to decide if there is a case to be made against anyone other than the half-dozen or so individuals who have been prosecuted so far.
The texts are mostly political fodder for Tate Reeves’ Democratic opponent, Brandon Presley, who has been trying very hard — at somewhat of a stretch — to tie the welfare scandal around the neck of Reeves, who served as lieutenant governor when the malfeasance in the Mississippi Department of Human Services was going on.
The latest episode is somewhat reminiscent of White’s holding back three years ago information that reflected poorly on Bryant, for whom White previously worked and to whom White was indebted for initially putting him into the state auditor’s job.
When the welfare scandal first came to light in 2020, White made a big splash about the case and credited Bryant for being the whistleblower who got the auditor’s investigation started. What White didn’t mention, however, was that there were numerous text messages between Bryant and some of the principals implicated in the scandal that suggest Bryant was aware of some of the questionable spending and that a couple of the beneficiaries, including Favre, were eager to reward the governor when he left office for his supposed help.
Obviously, White has not been all that concerned about Favre’s image. The civil demands against the former quarterback and the tough words between the two, including a defamation lawsuit Favre has filed against the state auditor, indicate the two are not chums.
But White has earned justifiable criticism for not being more forthcoming with information pertaining to the last two occupants of the Governor’s Mansion.
