Jabari Edwards’ allegations about a racial or political motivation driving the fraud case against him are baseless and a distraction from the facts, according to a response filed by prosecutors.
In a response filed Nov. 27 in the Northern District of Mississippi, the government claims Edwards is using accusations of racial or political bias to distract from his guilt.
In a motion filed in November, Edwards alleges the charges against him were part of an effort to prosecute former Mayor Robert Smith, and that federal agents focused on white interviewees while assembling evidence for the indictment against him.
Edwards asked that the court review the transcripts of the grand jury that indicted him, and that the indictment be dismissed.
Edwards and J5 President Antwann Richardson were indicted in June 2022 for misusing more than $2 million in Paycheck Protection Plan and Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program funding.
They allegedly fraudulently applied for coronavirus relief funds through North Atlantic Security, which Edwards owned at the time but later sold, and Edwards Enterprises, a company listing Edwards as its sole member.
The two are jointly charged with 17 criminal counts, including multiple charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.
Prosecutors gave short shrift to Edwards’ claim the investigation, which apparently stemmed from an inquiry into Columbus’ blight remediation program, was somehow improper. Investigators merely pivoted from one potential crime to another.
“A good law enforcement officer follows the evidence,” the prosecutors wrote. “Should a police officer who pulls a car over for speeding ignore the drugs in plain view on the passenger seat simply because he was initially investigating a traffic violation?”
Edwards argued in his motion that no wrongdoing was discovered in the investigation of the blight program, but prosecutors disagreed.
“The government does not necessarily agree it found no irregularities in the blight program,” prosecutors wrote, “but it is not a point worth arguing about, as the defendant has not yet been charged with any crimes related to the blight program.”
Edwards argued that investigators from the U.S. Department of the Treasury Office of the Special Investigator General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program used grand jury subpoenas to get his financial records because they did not have enough evidence to convince a judge to issue a search warrant.
“Perhaps counsel for the defendant just got confused momentarily while drafting his memorandum, but the government was issuing grand jury subpoenas, not seeking a search warrant,” the prosecutors wrote. “… Issuing subpoenas for bank records is a fairly standard investigative technique, particularly for financial crimes.”
Brian Jones is the local government reporter for Columbus and Lowndes County.
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