As Mississippi fights a shortage of officials across all sports, incidents involving confrontations between fans, coaches and referees and umpires are becoming more and more common. The Cleveland boys chat with MHSAA and SWAC head of officials, Robert Holloway about how Mississippians can fix both problems.
The NAACP and Southern Poverty Law Center filed a federal complaint alleging the state of Mississippi did not adequately dispense federal COVID-19 relief funds to combat the pandemic’s outsized impact on communities of color.
The complaint, filed on behalf of both the national organization and state chapter of the NAACP, says the state’s actions violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after state officials “deliberately shut out advocacy groups” from receiving federal funds to address the pandemic in the minority community.
“The State of Mississippi and other public and private organizations in the state received $15.7 billion in COVID-19 related funding, yet the state has continued to provide a discriminatory program, resulting in disproportionate rates of sickness, hospitalization, and death in Black, Indigenous, and brown communities,” the NAACP complaint says.
The complaint continues: “Mississippi has engaged in unlawful race discrimination when it failed to plan, distribute, or otherwise provide COVID-19 vaccine access in an equitable manner breaching its legal duty to ensure nondiscrimination in federally assisted emergency preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery programs.”
When asked for comment, State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs said his agency, the Mississippi State Department of Health, recognized the COVID-19 racial health disparities early and worked hard to correct them.
“Although the state encountered numerous challenges to advancing the equity mission — including early vaccine access, trust issues, and technological barriers to vaccine appointments — a statewide coalition of agency, faith, medical and community leaders was able to deliver much needed information, vaccines and PPE to minority populations across the state,” Dobbs said.
The results of those efforts, Dobbs said, are apparent today: a higher vaccine rate among Black Mississippians than whites in the state, a higher vaccine rate among Black Mississippians than Black Americans at large, and a lower COVID-19 mortality rate for Black Mississippians than whites. The vaccine rate for Hispanics, Dobbs added, was near equal to that of white Mississippians.
The pandemic, in its earlier days, did have disparate effects on Mississippians of color — in mortality rates, in spread of the virus and in vaccine rates once they became available. Dobbs and other state officials were brutally honest about those racial disparities and said they worked hard to address them.
But the complaint alleges that as the pandemic wore on, state leaders did not develop a strategy to ensure a higher vaccination rate in the state — especially in the minority community — and did not provide a plan to improve the vaccination rate.
The complaint also points out the state’s health care system has built-in problems that disproportionally impact minorities. For instance, the complaint says more of a plan was needed to aid minorities in being transported to vaccine locations.
“Just as Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has disavowed the existence of systemic racism, so too has the state’s COVID-19 vaccine program failed to account for these systemic deficiencies and vulnerabilities,” the complaint said. “The state’s vaccine program discriminates against communities on the basis of race, color, or national origin, even when disparities in access to COVID-19 testing foreshadowed these problems.”
The NAACP is asking the U.S. Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights “to immediately investigate and remedy the unlawful and ongoing discrimination.”
“We would like immediate and lasting changes to vaccine policies and procedures to ensure economically and socially marginalized groups have access to vaccine programs in their areas, including urban and rural communities that have inadequate or substandard access to private health care facilities, hospitals, and pharmacies,” said Rev. Robert James, president of the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP.
On March 26, thousands of incarcerated people at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl congregated in the gymnasium for the start of a week-long revival.
After Kenneth Copeland finished preaching, Burl Cain took the stage to deliver some news. The commissioner told the crowd that MDOC had decided to relocate the women at CMCF to a part of the prison that housed men, and the men would be moved to the unit where many women live.
Some of the men clapped. But from the back of the gym, where the women sat on folded chairs and raised bleachers, came boos.
CMCF is the only state-run prison specifically for women and juveniles, but since the early 2000s, MDOC has housed more men than women there. Before the end of April, MDOC plans to move the women from their current housing in 1A Yard to 720, a men’s unit near the back of the prison.
MDOC says the move will make CMCF safer by limiting interactions between incarcerated men and women.
But some of the nearly 870 women living at CMCF are concerned the move will lead to MDOC taking away the programs they value. They say 720 is a“roach-infested, filthy, uninhabitable lockdown building with sewage problems” and that the impending move is reflective of a pattern of unequal treatment of women at CMCF.
Earlier this month, some of the women decided to protest the decision by writing letters they circulated in the prison and delivered, via their families, to state senators.
“Dear Women of CMCF,” reads one of the letters obtained by Mississippi Today. “This is the time. Women either stand together or we will certainly fall. This is about more than just housing. Women need to assess our situation carefully. This current administration certainly has. If we allow them to move us to 720, this will be the end for us.”
In an interview with Mississippi Today, Cain characterized the move as an improvement for the women at CMCF. He says MDOC plans to expand, not limit, the women’s rehabilitation programs.
“The women, in my opinion, should’ve never been in the same compound as the men,” Cain said. “Nowhere else do you see that in the country. We have a chance to separate them, and let them have their own prison, their own campus — that’s the right thing to do, period. If anybody doesn’t like it, they’ll like it, because they’re gonna see it’s good, and we’re gonna make it really good for them.”
Cain also said the women seemed “happy” when he announced the move at the revival.
“I don’t know that they booed me,” he said. “I couldn’t hear. Everybody was shouting at me and happy and having a good time.”
The move was initially slated to take place the first week of April but was delayed, said Pauline Rogers, the president of the RECH Foundation, a religious nonprofit that provides reentry services. On April 5, a warden asked two women from each zone in 1A Yard to give their feedback on the move.
MDOC has called CMCF “no typical prison” and “the most dynamic” due to its size and varying types of housing units and cells. The prison was built in 1986 by former Gov. William Winter to house women who up until then had been incarcerated alongside men at Parchman State Prison.
Today, CMCF has the largest population of any state-run prison. About 1,800 men are housed at CMCF, which also serves as the reception and diagnostic center for the entire state prison system.
In the letters, women at CMCF write that despite poor conditions at 1A Yard, they don’t want to lose the lives they’ve built at the unit. In some buildings at 1A Yard, mold grows on the walls, sewage backs up in the bathroom and the drinking water is brown.
Still, the women write that 1A Yard is a “central location” to their daily activities. They are able to participate in a variety of programming and activities such as fine art painting, crochet classes, apparel and upholstery, photography club, choir, seminary school, cosmetology and gardening.
“We have a life here, as dismal as it is,” one woman wrote.
If relocated to 720, the women are concerned they will lose access to their programs and their overall quality of life will decrease. They say 720 has many of the same substandard housing conditions as 1A Yard yet it has less physical space for services. 720 is further away from the medical center at CMCF, which could negatively impact access to care for a number of frail, elderly women. The architecture of the unit is also set up for men, with open shower bays and urinals instead of single stalls.
“There is absolutely no reason to take away our quality of life and give it to the men,” one of the letters says.
Rogers talks to incarcerated people nearly every day through her work and described the proposed move as “a move of death for some of these women.” She is also worried about the potential for a riot if MDOC ignores the women’s concerns.
The women “know they’re convicted and doing time,” Rogers said. “But they (MDOC) keep adding punishment on top of punishment. Punishment seems to be the foundation of the prison system, not rehabilitation. And anything they can do to continue punishing is how they continue to operate. … After a while you get people to a boiling point and they explode.”
Some of the women say the move to 720 is part of a broader pattern of discrimination at CMCF.They point to a series of changes that occurred last year afterMDOC replaced the longtime superintendent who oversaw the facility. Women lost their jobs in the central kitchen, one of the letters says. Then, after an incarcerated man escaped, older women were relocated from their elderly-friendly housing. CMCF started holding programs and activities sporadically.
“The real problem is one of unequal treatment,” one of the letters says.
In 2020, the Department of Justice announced it was investigating conditions at CMCF. Five months later, Tate Reeves appointed Cain commissioner.
Cain told Mississippi Today the move is part of his plan to make room for a GED program at Washington County Regional Correctional Facility by relocating the women there to CMCF. The letters say the move is also to accommodate a new men’s boxing program, on which Cain declined to comment.
In time, Cain said MDOC will rename 720, “and it’ll just be the ‘Mississippi Women’s Prison,’ or some good name for it. I don’t want to say ‘prison’ maybe.” He says MDOC will build a 6,000-square-foot church and a recreation center at 720 that will allow the prison to expand the programs it currently offers the women.
“The point is, they will be happy because they’re worried that they’ll not have what they had before,” Cain said. “But our goal is for them to have more than they have before.”
Rogers said it’s ironic that men at MDOC are making these decisions for the women incarcerated at CMCF. She called the move a way to marginalize women at the prison by “moving them out of more than moving them into.”
She suggested that if the move must occur, then MDOC should “start releasing those women with health issues and elderly women. If you’re going to do any kind of move, make that move. If they have a support system and somewhere to go, move ‘em out.”
Before publishing its investigative series “The Backchannel,” which reveals Phil Bryant’s entanglement with Mississippi’s welfare scandal, Mississippi Today sat down with the former governor to discuss his leadership in the state’s safety net programs.
We initially published the portion of the interview in which Bryant discussed the stock offers he received from retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre and a Florida neuroscientist, whose companies received more than $2 million in allegedly stolen welfare funds from the state of Mississippi.
Below is the remainder of the interview, edited for length and clarity.
MT: Pivoting to the overarching issues at DHS. So, there was money that the defendants allegedly stole and then there was $77 million that the auditors say was misspent. And this is a major departmental failure.
Bryant: Mm.
MT: When did you find out about the overall breach?
Bryant: Um—
MT: Because the tip that you relayed was a small thing about John Davis and Brett DiBiase, correct?
Bryant: Yeah, when (State Auditor) Shad White — didn’t Shad report that at some time?
My answer is I don’t remember. I don’t remember when I read it, but I read in the news somewhere there was some $70 million dollars.
MT: Yeah, ‘cause I’ve always cared more about the overarching breach. I’m calling it a breach—
Bryant: Yeah.
MT: —because there were dozens and dozens of people who had a hand in misspending $77 million. That wasn’t a few employees stealing money from the agency. Two people are not accountable for that entire scheme. So, you served as auditor for more than 10 years. So, you know about spending protocols and I’m wondering why you think you didn’t know about the overall welfare breach sooner?
Bryant: I wish I had. Because I depend on the state auditor. That’s all you can do, and the internal controls. I mean, you depend on audits, you depend on federal audits. Again, I’m thinking surely CMS comes in here with their auditors and audit these funds and the state auditors in here audit these funds. And again, let’s not forget the attorney general, who has a lawyer sitting in there every day—
MT: I know, it blows my mind.
Bryant: I mean, didn’t somebody see something? That’s what — it blew my mind. Like, how could this happen? How could everybody have missed this?
MT: And I want to ask you, because you were the executive, you were the top official in the state, and you oversaw that department.
Bryant: Because no one ever came to me — well I was over a lot of departments. So, it’s impossible to determine what’s going on at DEQ and the Department of Public Safety and Human Services and MDA. Is somebody in there doing something they shouldn’t be? And the reason we put internal controls in and the state auditor is to do that, because the governor can’t sit there and independently go and try to determine if money’s being properly spent or not spent. I didn’t have the capacity to do that. I didn’t have the personnel to go and do that. That’s why we depend on oversight committees from the Legislature. So, every year there was a budget that went to Human Services. Wouldn’t the oversight committee of the Legislature say, “Okay, we want to see how your spending is going. Show us where you’re spending your money. Show us all the grants that you have.” Don’t they do that?
MT: What is that committee?
Bryant: There is a, well, there’s appropriations committee. But I believe there’s a DHS oversight committee. Am I right about that?
MT: I’m not familiar with this.
Bryant: I think there is an oversight committee, but check me and make sure I’m right. But even the appropriations process. When I used to sit on the Ways and Means Committee, and the joint legislative budget process, they would come in with stacks, not just Human Services, but every agency, “Here’s my expenditures. Here’s where it’s going. Here’s the cars that we bought.” And you could review them. So, no one caught that during the appropriations process, during the audit process, the attorney general, but I was supposed to catch it? None of them caught it, but I’m, being governor, and I’m supposed to catch it?
MT: Well, you were in direct communication with John Davis as your subordinate.
Bryant: And John Davis, every time I talked to John Davis, said, “Boy, we’re doing so good. I’m traveling around the country, talking to other people about how good Mississippi is.”
MT: Right, like when he went to Congress in June of 2019.
Bryant: Yeah. And he was literally testifying — I was told, again, I can’t go out and independently verify all of it — that he was testifying to Congress about the effectiveness of the Mississippi program the day I called him and said, “You need to get back here.” Wasn’t he testifying before Congress?
MT: You called him the day he came back, I think.
Bryant: Maybe it was a day or two.
MT: You were concerned with the travel.
Bryant: When this first came up, I said, “Well, let me talk to John Davis. Let’s get John Davis down here and find out what this is about.” And they said, “Well, he’s in Washington. And oh, by the way” — and I want to be careful here. I shouldn’t talk anymore because he’s got a trial ahead of him. So I don’t want to—
MT: Well, his charges are pretty narrowly tailored to Brett DiBiase.
Bryant: Yeah. But the judge has been pretty determined about people not talking about these cases.
MT: Can I just say what I have gathered? I mean, he came back, and you were questioning him about who paid for his hotel room at Trump Plaza.
Bryant: To the best of my memory, and forgive me for the details, but the first I recollect was this payment that went to someone else’s P.O. Box.
MT: Went to John Davis’ P.O. Box.
Bryant: You said that, I didn’t. I mean, you’re right. You’re right.
MT: That was Brett DiBiase’s $48,000 contract.
Bryant: So that was the first thing. And normally when that happens, and I’m just saying hypothetically, there’s a ghost employee or someone splitting the paycheck. You send it to me. I cash it. We split it.
MT: Kickback, whatever.
Bryant: So I went directly and I want to believe, before I even talked to John Davis, I know I went directly to Shad White and said, “There’s something wrong here.” But the other thing is, I didn’t say, “And only look at this, Shad, state auditor. Don’t look at anything else over there.”
MT: So, there’s two pretty different things, here, with money that was taken through fraudulent means, as is outlined in the indictments and then millions and millions that flew out the door unaccounted for. Those are, kind of, different things. The millions and millions that flew out of the door primarily flew through Families First for Mississippi, which was run by two non-profits.
Bryant: North and south?
MT: They both had — north was like $15 million, I think.
Bryant: A lot of money.
MT: So, you heavily promoted that program. And when you look back, I wonder what you think happened.
Bryant: Well, let’s see, heavily promoted. I would go to things that I was invited to that sounded good. The food center over by the medical center, that sounded like a really good thing. And the staff would come in and, oh, the guy that owns the restaurants—
MT: Jeff Good.
Bryant: Yeah. I thought Jeff was doing a marvelous job in Jackson and I really liked him. So I said, “Well, sure, I’ll go. Jeff’s got a program over there. I’ll go.” I don’t know that I realize it’s somebody was coming from Families First. I—
MT: So how do you think John Davis started sending tens of millions of dollars to these two nonprofits without you knowing about it?
Bryant: Because I would not be looking at the books. I would not be there going through the audit material of the Department of Human Services.
MT: But even just seeing what’s happening in the community and the banners and the signs and the presence that Families First had. That didn’t strike you—
Bryant: I was being governor. I just did not try to go through and see what that looked like. It would be like saying, well, if people are buying a lot of Tahoes out at the Department of Public Safety. I don’t go audit automobiles. I’m just, sorry, I didn’t notice a lot of the signs. I went to a couple of events, and they all seem very nice, events that were going to help the community.
But no, I didn’t, I cannot go and do an audit independently in an agency. That’s just not the governor’s responsibility. I don’t have the capacity to do that. So, I depended on the auditor to do it.
MT: In your communication with the welfare director, John Davis — you talked earlier about not having a say in funding decisions and spending at the agencies that your office is over — but you would say things like, “Any way we can help these guys?” with an attachment to an organization’s funding request.
Bryant: A question.
MT: There’s one example that I can think of where you asked him about funding a specific vendor and he responded that he would reach out to fund them that day. And this shows the influence that you had over your involvement in the welfare department’s spending and—
Bryant: Isn’t that a question?
MT: —and in his decision making.
Bryant: I mean, here’s what would happen—
MT: He responded saying that he would “fund them today.” And as a former auditor, you know that an agency can’t unilaterally direct money to a specific vendor without a proper procurement process.
Bryant: If they owe them money they can.
MT: If they owe them money?
Bryant: If they owe them money.
MT: We’re not talking about agencies that—
Bryant: If a vendor calls and says, “Department of Human Services hadn’t paid me.” And, and I go, “Well, let me let me check.” And I text John and say, “Have we paid these guys?” And he said, “I did it today.” I’m not sure that’s it, but I can assure you, I can assure you, that I would have never said, “Go around the bid process and pay these guys.”
MT: They didn’t even have a bid process, so if you asked John—
Bryant: Who were they, can you tell me who they were?
MT: One I can think of was Willowood Developmental Center.
Bryant: Oh yeah.
MT: There was T.K. Martin at Mississippi State University
Bryant: Okay.
MT: You had also asked about funding for Save the Children.
Bryant: Yep. Okay. Because those are very near and dear to me. Now, they’re nonprofits. They’re organizations. Save the Children. And I would ask him, “Can we help fund Save the Children? Can we fund this program at Mississippi State?” Because if I remember, there were going to be like a hundred people laid off at Mississippi State. And it was always a question: “Can we fund these?” And if he would say “No,” then fine. It was a question. And you said the other one was?
MT: Willowood.
Bryant: Willowood. Look, I did fundraising for Willowood. We did it back, me and Mike Moore and a bunch of folks. They do phenomenal work. And that’s, yes, I hope we funded — I will tell you, I would have asked for funding for Willowood.
MT: But the point is that he responded, “Yes, I will reach out to fund them today,” which shows some favoritism.
Bryant: If it’s wrong to try to help Willowood and those poor children out there, then I will have to say I was wrong, but I don’t think I was. I think that those people, those wonderful people at Willowood, I would do whatever I could to try to help them.
MT: It’s more about what it shows about how John Davis was running the agency and the way that he would make these unilateral decisions, without seeing an application from them first, for example.
Bryant: I would ask him when people would call me and they would say, “Willowood gets funded by Human Services every year. We hadn’t got funded this year.” And I would say, “Wow, let me check and see.” And that’s what I would do. I wouldn’t pick organizations and say, “fund this one, fund this one, fund this one.”
MT: Don’t you think that kind of discourse was putting pressure on your agency director to please his boss?
Bryant: I think a question from me saying, “Can we fund these folks?” is just that, a question, of trying to inquire about wonderful programs, like the one at Mississippi State. I think it was a children’s program, an educational program?
MT: It’s a clinic. Autism and dyslexia clinic.
Bryant: Yeah, autism. Autism. So yeah, there’s the pattern of, I cared very much about these children.
MT: Actually, an email about this is cited in the audit. It’s in a footnote regarding improper payments to T.K. Martin, where John Davis sent you an email saying that DHS could not fund it because it would not fit in the guidelines of TANF or any other grant that DHS administers.
Bryant: I’m glad he did.
MT: Then he came back a couple of weeks later and texted you and said, “We found a way to fund T.K. Martin Center” on your request.
Bryant: Perhaps he did it. And I hope it was proper and legal and ethical and moral because I remember people at Mississippi State, and I don’t remember who, calling and saying, “This is a wonderful program for these poor children and we’re going to lose it.”
MT: There was a lot of pressure on John Davis at that time to fund TK Martin.
Bryant: And I think it stopped at one point, didn’t it?
MT: And he told you that he would fund them. He told you that he told them that they were being funded before DHS ever saw an application from them
Bryant: But hasn’t DHS been funding them for—
MT: No. It’s an autism clinic. They don’t get DHS funding. They shouldn’t get DHS funding according to guidelines. They were getting DHS funding through Families First, but DHS had no record of that because they didn’t require Families First to send any expenditures back to them.
Bryant: I remember there was a program at Mississippi State that we terminated and a lot of people were very frustrated over that.
MT: There was a child care grant that ended up going to them, that Jacob Black signed after John Davis left. I don’t know why they would be receiving a child care grant.
Bryant: I don’t know that. But I was sensitive to children and if we could help fund them, I would have appreciated doing that, trying to fund needy children, autistic children.
MT: Right. And I’m not suggesting that the cause wasn’t good. It’s more about what it says about the agency’s operations, and if that’s how it was operating then—
Bryant: So, they could have funded hundreds and hundreds, and I called him three times and said, “Can you, maybe, check on these children?”
MT: I mean, I don’t know what you called him for that I don’t have text messages for.
Editor’s note: Mississippi Today only possesses text messages between Phil Bryant and John Davis for a four-month span during his three-and-a-half-year administration.
Bryant: About three times. I wouldn’t sit there every day and say, “Let me call.” I had very limited knowledge about all of those programs. You just cannot, as governor, keep up with that many moving parts.
When somebody calls and says, “I’ve got a children’s program, like Willowood, or a challenged adult program, and we’re going to have to put these people in the streets,” I would make a phone call. I would say, “Let me see what I can do,” because I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want these people to be without a place to stay.
MT: In the same line as, you know, favoritism, nepotism: Davis and his staff took a special interest in your great-nephew, Noah McRae. They talked about him as if he was an employee of the agency, but he was receiving payments from Families First, Nancy New’s nonprofit. You also asked Davis for help getting Noah into treatment. And Nancy had previously said that she paid for Noah to go to rehab. Can you explain the Noah situation? Was this an inappropriate use of the state agency?
Bryant: I don’t think so because he was indigent. He and his father had moved here after a divorce from North Carolina. His father had no job. He had no means of support. I want to be very careful here because, he was very fragile, in a very threatening, emotional state. The child was. And we were trying to help him. He had no means of support. His father was unemployed. They were divorced. There was nothing. They had nothing. They were coming here trying to start from that. And he had a very difficult life. Mother divorced. Drugs. Heartbreaking story.
So we tried to help him. Where are the resources to help someone who doesn’t have any money, who is a juvenile, who needs treatment, who may be self-destructive? So yes, I tried to help him.
MT: You know about Nancy paying for his rehab?
Bryant: I do not.
MT: She was receiving state contracts. So she would have a reason to, you know, want to be favored.
Bryant: But hopefully there would be someone that would fit — I mean, his situation would have fit the support within DHS.
MT: Well, that’s what I don’t understand because Families First didn’t make direct payments to poor people. Families First didn’t have a program where people could come get cash assistance. So I don’t know why he was getting paid by Nancy’s nonprofit.
Bryant: I don’t know either. And I didn’t realize that. I mean, he was going to her school. So there was a hope that his special needs could be treated there. He was, let me be careful, this is his mental and emotional health. And he’s in jail now, has a 9-month-old child. I mean, this is a tragic situation with this young man and his family. I don’t know how she was paying that out of that. I think he could have easily fit into a category of getting support, if you’ve got an indigent child and we didn’t want to put him into the foster care system because his father was here trying to find a job, trying to get a home, trying to get a place for them to live in.
MT: I mean, he was an adult by the time he was working for Families First or being looked after by DHS. And I don’t know why John Davis, as director of an agency would have kind of a direct line. Someone in that position. Why would John Davis have been texting your great-nephew?
Bryant: Um, because he was my great-nephew.
MT: Right.
Bryant: And I’m sure I told John at some point, “This is a tragedy and we’re worried about his health,” and John would have said, “Let me help you with him. Let me see what I can do for this child.” And I would’ve probably said, “Thank you because I’m afraid we might lose him.” He is at that point.
MT: And you don’t know about how Nancy assisted with that?
Bryant: No, I don’t. John said, “Let us help.” You get him in her school. And I don’t think that lasted long.
MT: Did you have kind of a familial relationship with John Davis, for him to be helping out your nephew like that? I don’t understand—
Bryant: Yes, I mean, I knew John Davis well. I mean, I knew all my directors well. When I would see them, we would interact and talk, “How are things going,” and—
MT: But for him to take your young family member under his wing?
Bryant: Would I have asked John Davis to help a child in that condition? Or if he offered to do it, would I have accepted it? Yes.
MT: But Nancy New paying for him to go to rehab?
Bryant: I don’t remember that happening.
MT: So you’d be surprised — would you be surprised?
Bryant: I wouldn’t be surprised.
MT: Right, because why would she do that?
Bryant: I don’t know. If she had, I would have thought that they, maybe, were funds — she didn’t serve any children? — so it would not have been unusual, I would have thought, for her to pay for someone going to a rehab in the state of Mississippi, you know, like at Region 8 or somewhere like that.
I mean, I don’t follow all of the spending. I don’t know all the guidelines, but for an agency that works with the Department of Human Services, and I don’t remember her doing it, but saying, “We think we can pay for a rehab of this very fragile, indigent child. We think that’s the right thing to do,” would not have shocked me. I would not have said, “Whoa, wait a minute, let me go read the code books and make sure we can do all of that.”
I would have said, “Well, probably she can because it’s an indigent child that has huge emotional problems.”
Editor’s note: When Bryant’s great-nephew Noah McRae left prison and Bryant sought help from Davis on his behalf, McRae was an adult.
MT: Yeah, that’s not — young men who are poor are basically out of luck—
Bryant: They are.
MT: —at DHS, so—
Bryant: Oh at DHS?
MT: Yeah.
Bryant: Well.
MT: So, it’s unusual for someone to have gotten that kind of support from a nonprofit director with TANF funds or any other DHS funds.
Bryant: I just simply did not know that. Like I said, I saw the school that was out there, and thought there’s a lot of those children being served. I’m sure—
Editor’s note: Nancy New’s school, New Summit School, did serve children with mental health disorders, but it was a for-profit school and charged tuition.
MT: Yeah. It’s sensitive and it’s relevant because, I mean, obviously the nonprofit paying for someone to go to rehab is at the center of the criminal charges with Brett DiBiase going to Malibu.
Bryant: And I just simply didn’t know that. And I think, again, he’s not my child. He’s a great-nephew by marriage, if you will. But we were just simply trying to help the young man. If somebody did something wrong in trying to help them, I’m sorry and would be disappointed.
MT: So, what exactly did you ask John Davis to do for Noah?
Bryant: I don’t remember asking John Davis or having a conversation about Noah at all. But I said, if he said, “Let me see if I can help through Human Services,” knowing he’s Human Services director, knowing I’ve got this fragile child, I would’ve more than likely said, “Thank you. Whatever you can do to help this child inside — you know, again — the guidelines. He needs help.”
And I remember, I think, somewhere the discussion of Regional 8 Mental Health Center?
MT: Right.
Bryant: So do they charge indigent people who go there?
MT: They work on a sliding scale.
(Bryant’s partner interjected, redirecting Bryant to answer what he knew about how welfare officials were assisting Noah).
Bryant: Very, very little about how it all took place, who funded it, it was — I, just believing that Human Services, and even Families First, had the capacity to help an indigent child who needed mental health. If you had come up to me and said, “Do you think they can help him?” I would’ve said, “Well, of course they can.” That’s what they do. What they should be doing. The population they should be helping.
MT: Were you following his journey through the legal system at that time? He was out on parole.
Bryant: No, no. I thought this happened when he was in high school.
MT: I’m talking about when he got out of prison in December of 2018, and then started working, in whatever capacity, with Families First in January of 2019. You asked John Davis for help getting him into treatment in April of 2019.
Bryant: Okay.
MT: So that’s the timeline.
Bryant: I don’t remember. I remember struggling trying to help this young man. I didn’t know he was out of prison. I don’t remember the timeline, but there was no, again, no benefit to us whatsoever of helping this child except trying to save his life.
I mean, Anna, if that’s a bad thing—
MT: It’s more about why Nancy New would have been helping your great-nephew.
Bryant: I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe John asked her, maybe she interacted with the child at some point.
MT: And you got him into New Summit earlier on. When he was kid, you got into New Summit.
Bryant: I may have said, “New Summit would have been a good place for him.” I don’t remember anyone sitting down having these conversations.
MT: That would have been several years ago.
Bryant: Yeah. All I remember is trying to help this young man who had no means of support, who had later been in jail, who was just struggling. And we were trying to help. Now if they can’t do that, they should be able to. If Human Services can’t help these type of children, then what good are they?
MT: Yeah, I mean, when we’re talking about treatment, you know, if you’re talking about drug treatment, you signed a law making it so that people couldn’t access the TANF program unless they got a drug test.
Bryant: Right.
MT: So that’s kind of—
Bryant: We were trying to identify who was on drugs so we could treat ‘em.
MT: But DHS never paid for people to go to treatment, except for when it was done in secret.
Bryant: I did not know that and I think they should have. And I think that they should be allowed. Again, I don’t know all of the restrictions, but if Human Services can’t pay for indigent children, for mental health services and drug rehab, who does?
MT: I mean, that would be like Medicaid or the Department of Mental Health, and the Community Mental Health Centers.
Bryant: And I’m not sure he didn’t access some of that. His father was working with him during that time. And they may have. I remember his father telling me he had gone and filled out a lot of paperwork with maybe the Department of Mental Health? I’m not sure what, they were trying to access some help for him.
MT: The number of families receiving direct payments dropped 75% during your administration. And the reason that’s kind of ironic to me is ‘cause getting money directly into the homes of poor families was the entire concept of the Family First Initiative to prevent the removal of poor children from their families, which your wife co-chaired, if you recall.
And I remember listening to the radio one time, and SuperTalk was interviewing Nancy New and John Davis. And the interviewer said, you know, “That makes perfect sense to me because if we’re just going to pay foster families to take care of these children, why not just give that money to the parent?” Right?
Bryant: Mhm.
MT: And of course from everything we’ve seen, and everything we know about what happened with Families First, that didn’t occur. Money did not go to poor families. A lot of that money was instead spent on campaigns, and initiatives, and motivational speeches. Teddy DiBiase, For example, he was paid $3 million in welfare funds for doing things like speaking at your Healthy Teens Rally.
Editor’s note: Nancy New’s nonprofit paid $5 million to lease the athletic facilities on University of Southern Mississippi’s campus so it could conduct its programming there. It used the lease for exactly one event, according to a records request: the governor’s 2018 Healthy Teens Rally.
Bryant: Mm.
MT: Can you describe how these kinds of purchases specifically fit into your priorities for your welfare department? And talk about the amount of money that was going into programs like Healthy Teens, or Healthy Teens was used as justification for—
Bryant: I think Healthy Teens was a good program. And I was very proud of it, meeting with the young, healthy teens and seeing teen pregnancy reduce by some 24, 25%. Again, I wasn’t there to say who’s spending money on advertisements. I didn’t get to attend that rally, so I don’t know that DiBiase, if he did come and speak, I would not have said, “Let’s go pay him for it.”
I just did not control the day to day operations, I could not control the day to day operations of the Department of Human Services or Families First, either north or south. I just did not have time as governor to go and do that. But I would have hoped – and one of the reasons that we created the children’s services, we broke that off so we could spend more time helping children, so we could fit more foster children in the program.
Editor’s note: He’s referring to the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services, which was created in 2016 and oversees the state’s foster care system, which was then and still is the subject of an ongoing court settlement due to its failure to protect children in its custody. One of the goals is to reduce the foster care population, not fit more children into the program.
And we increased the number of adoptions because we were able to go out and find attorneys, like at Mississippi College, to donate their time, so that we could get them through the court system and get them in a forever home. I mean, we were working constantly, I was, trying to find families.
Deborah was reading all across the state of Mississippi and hugging every child all across the state of Mississippi. She just received the Winter-Reed Award, like last month. So, it wasn’t as if we were ignoring children. We were doing everything we could to try and protect them.
MT: Except for putting direct resources into the home.
Bryant: And I did not know that was not happening. John reported to me one time that a number of people had dropped off, and I said, “Tell me why.” And he told me that they had not reapplied.
MT: Yeah. And I’m not just talking specifically about people receiving cash assistance. I also mean children who are at risk of being taken from their home, through the Family First Initiative.
Bryant: Right. And that’s why we created the Child Protection Service.
MT: Right. I’ll get to that.
Bryant: So we could do a better job of that. Alright, we gotta, yeah, I gotta go see my grandchildren.
MT: So Ted DiBiase Sr. said that you selected his ministry to be the face—
Bryant: That’s not true.
MT: —of his faith-based initiative.
Bryant: I don’t know where that came from. I don’t know that I’ve ever met Mr. DiBiase. It seems like we ran across each other in an airport one time.
MT: And you went to the movie set of his son, Teddy.
Bryant: Yeah.
MT: So you were closer with the sons than the father?
Bryant: I think he invited me to come out to a movie set and we were promoting making movies in Mississippi. Yeah, Ted came and met with me several times about making movies in Mississippi. I remember talking to him a couple of times. I went to one movie set.
MT: Okay.
Bryant: But no, I didn’t select Mr. DiBiase—
MT: Yeah, he said you selected him to be the face of his faith based initiative.
Bryant: That’s not true. But again, I would have looked at Mr. DiBiase and his mission as a good thing, not realizing he was getting a large amount of money for it.
MT: Right.
Bryant: So if someone came up and said, you know, “Ted DiBiase, The Million Dollar Man, has this wonderful mission where he’s teaching Christian principles,” I would have said, “Great. That sounds like a really good idea.” And Anna, that’s what happened most of the time. People would tell me part of a story. “DiBiase is out preaching. He’s a Christian man. He’s carrying the message around.” Fantastic. “Oh, by the way, we’re paying him a million dollars.” Hold up. That doesn’t sound good. Somebody else had to make those decisions.
MT: I mean, why do you think there was the prevalence of that at the department at that time? I don’t know that I’ve heard of multi-million dollar contracts for those kinds of services prior to the last few years of your time in office.
Bryant: I couldn’t tell you. And that was, again, John Davis’ decision, not mine. I surely didn’t pick Mr. DiBiase, and say, “Let’s go pay him millions of dollars.”
MT: Okay. Just really quick, sorry, on the point of Family First: You represented to the public that the state was embracing the Family First Prevention Services Act.
Bryant: I think that’s right.
MT: Remember the Family First Summit.
Bryant: Wasn’t that a federal act?
MT: Yeah, it’s a federal act that puts more resources into the state for prevention services, so not taking a kid from the home.
Bryant: Right.
MT: And you represented that the state was going to be a national model for embracing that Act. And it was all about keeping the kid in the home, right? This is 2018 timeframe. But you didn’t allow the Act to take effect in Mississippi. And to this day, the state has not submitted a Family First plan to the federal government, therefore none of those resources have flown into the state, at all. Can you explain–
Bryant: Whose responsibility is it for submitting that?
MT: CPS.
Bryant: Okay. But who at the state should fill out the paperwork and submit it back to get the funding?
MT: The head of CPS.
Bryant: I’m sorry. Oh, Child Protection Services?
MT: Yes.
Bryant: I cannot imagine — and you can go talk to the two Supreme Court Judges I appointed — but I cannot imagine they would not have worked diligently to try to get those funds.
MT: I mean, they believe that the executive branch was putting barriers up for them doing that. There was a letter from—
Bryant: That’s just hard for me to believe.
MT: There was a letter from the court to that effect. Sent in late 2018.
Bryant: I’ll have to go back and research that. I don’t know if there were something within that act that we later found out was offensive. I just, I can’t answer that, but I know we worked on an early childhood grant. We were able to get $50 million.
MT: No, we never got $50 million under that — you’re talking about the Preschool Development Grant?
Bryant: Right.
MT: The $10.6 million?
Bryant: Right.
MT: Yeah. We never got any more money after that. They rejected our application.
Bryant: Well—
MT: I was actually going to ask about that if I had time. The Family-Based Unified and Integrated Early Childhood System–
Bryant: Right.
MT: The cornerstone of which were the Early Childhood Academies–
Bryant: Right.
MT: —that were supposed to get the childcare centers up to the comprehensive designation.
Bryant: Mhm.
MT: So, you’ve touted that program, even a year after you left office, talked about how much it accomplished. The $10.6 million. No childcare centers ever got the comprehensive designation and the whole system later was abandoned and is not currently in place.
Bryant: I would refer you to Dr. Laurie Smith on that. Dr. Smith managed that. And, from every report I got, was doing a very good job. Our intent was to go with the community colleges, if I remember this program correctly, and get the teachers at those daycare centers up to some level because we just had high school graduates coming in there. And the money went to the community colleges.
MT: That’s right.
Bryant: And the community colleges didn’t do the training?
MT: It didn’t happen on a level that the centers were able to get the comprehensive designation, which is what was important because it was going to increase their voucher amount.
Bryant: Then we would have to check with the community colleges and find out why they weren’t doing that.
MT: And they were investigated by the feds over that grant as well. Did you know that we didn’t even—
Bryant: And what’s been the outcome of that? I don’t run — there is a community college board. So they would have been in charge of that. Our effort would have been trying to get that funding to them and them meet the standards to get — my goal, my hope was to get some level of education for these young women that are coming in and keeping 20 3-year-olds in the room. And we went and sought grants that we could go through the committee. Now, if you’re telling me some government program didn’t work properly, I’m not saying that they always do.
MT: But you did say that that one did.
Bryant: And I was told that it was.
MT: How do you know if someone over a program is telling you–
Bryant: You don’t.
MT: Oh my—
Bryant: It’s impossible.
MT: Okay.
Bryant: When you come in and somebody says, “This program’s wonderful and it’s working well,” you have to take the director or the executive director of the community colleges’ word for that.
MT: Did you know that they put Austin Smith, John Davis’ nephew, over that grant at the community college board?
Bryant: No.
MT: Did you know that we didn’t even spend all of the $10.6 million that you’ve talked about in speeches?
Bryant: I didn’t.
MT: We had to give a chunk of it back.
Bryant: I just tried to get it and hope that it would be properly—
I can’t, Anna, I can’t be responsible for every failure in state government. The governor can’t do that. And you’ve tried. For example, not one economic development program that we incentivized has failed. Not one program in eight years that we incentivized through Mississippi department of economic development has failed.
You look back in history, there’s been $60, $70 million dollars of programs that went under. Who’s responsible for that? Not one of my failed. Not one. The Department of Public Safety had four or five schools. They ran like clockwork. We got more officers on the street saving lives than anybody else. We were selected as one of the outstanding states in public education. That law right there put more third graders through school than anything else.
(Bryant pointed at the 2013 third grade reading gate bill hanging on his office wall.)
We finished, last year, fourth in the nation for progress in reading. So if I’m going to get the blame for everything in the state of Mississippi, give me a little credit for something. ‘Cause a lot of good things happened. Now, did we let, did a text get by me every now and then? Absolutely. Did people do things at agencies that they shouldn’t? Sure they did.
And I think it’s happened in every administration in the history of this state. That’s why you have really good auditors. But just look at the things that we accomplished before you finish an article that says how I manipulated all of this, as some guy sitting in an ivory tower up there saying, “Oh, let me move all of these pieces around.”
As governor, you’re trying to just get to work, solve problems, help people’s lives, make Mississippi a better place to live. Educate children. Try to expand healthcare. Build a new hospital, a new medical school. Build a new nursing school. Get more people so they can take care of poor indigent people in the state of Mississippi.
And if somebody doesn’t do his job, it’s impossible or hard for me to stop and go back and check all of that. It’s thousands of people, 3 million people and thousands of employees. And I’m just sorry I couldn’t manage every one of them.
MT: Yeah. I just think that the failure at DHS and the breadth of the corruption at that agency was catastrophic. And I just can’t understand, or I can’t conceive that you wouldn’t be held accountable for some of that.
Bryant: Because I didn’t run that agency. And I’m the guy that called the people in to prove that that happened and to get it stopped. Okay. Here’s what I can say. Alright, I didn’t see that because as governor, I’m at 30,000 feet. When I did begin to see it, when I did see it, I called in an auditor. I hired the SAC of the FBI. We said, “We’ve got to get a comprehensive forensic audit in here.” Now, maybe if I had seen it three years earlier, I would have done all of that then. But as soon as I got to the point to where I realized something was not right, I did what I should have done. I called it the state auditor.
No, you can say, “Well you should have done it a lot earlier,” but you’ve never been governor and you don’t know how complex and busy that job is. And how you have to depend on other people.
MT: I’m not so much talking about the P.O. Box or, you know, $48,000. I’m talking about—
Bryant: It wasn’t just that though. That was just the beginning of it. I didn’t call him in and just say, “Find out about the P.O. Box.” “Find out about everything.” Chris Freeze—
MT: The sheer lack of controls, the sheer lack of oversight—
Bryant: Stunning.
MT: —that’s what I’m talking about.
Bryant: Stunning, yeah.
MT: Would you agree that the welfare system in Mississippi was flawed or broken?
Bryant: Oh, absolutely. Now I know that it was flawed or broken, but again, think about what information I was getting and I couldn’t independently go verify it. John Davis was telling me, “I go all over the country talking to these organizations about how great this system is.” He was testifying before Congress, the day he was in Washington—
MT: I know, he gave one example of how the state is helping people find self-sufficiency that is not food stamps—
Bryant: But, Anna, unless somebody—
MT: He cited “Law of 16,” his motivational speaking and self-help lecture that he was having Teddy DiBiase run for $3 million.
Bryant: I didn’t attend that but when somebody testifies—
MT: How does that happen in broad daylight?
Bryant: When somebody testifies before Congress on the positive things, I have to believe that positive things are happening. When I see more people going to work at any time in Mississippi’s history, you’ve got to feel like some of them getting off the welfare roll and getting good jobs. When you’re creating 12 — I don’t know how many jobs we created — hundreds of thousands of new jobs so that people can get a job and live the American dream.
MT: You did talk about how DHS was “getting people to work.” Did you ever see any statistics that bear that out? How many people received jobs through DHS?
Bryant: I probably did, but—
MT: I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. I don’t think that exists.
Bryant: I would have to look back and see, but what I did know is we reached 4.7% unemployment while we were maintaining or losing population.
MT: I mean, does that take into account the workforce participation rate?
Editor’s note: Mississippi’s workforce participation rate, in some cases a more revealing statistic about the strength of a state’s labor force, reached a historic low of 55% during Bryant’s administration.
Bryant: Yes. I mean, yes, it was. And it was taking into consideration that people were getting real jobs and they were getting better jobs and they were graduating from high school at the highest level ever. When I left office, our graduation rate surpassed the national average. Surpassed the national average.
Editor’s note: At about 2.5 hours, Bryant’s partner interjected to end the interview.
Bryant: Look, should I have caught some of that? Absolutely. Did I do anything wrong? No.
Bryant’s partner asked to clarify a previous question about whether the former governor should be held accountable for the MDHS scandal.
MT: What is your role? How much are you responsible for what happened at MDHS —getting to the heart of that question.
Bryant: Look, I’ll take my responsibility. Yeah, I was the governor. I wish I had been able to catch it. The moment I did, I called in the state auditor. Not just for a check. That was just the beginning, but go everywhere.
I never called him and said, “Just look at this and don’t look at anything else.” We’re going to find that bill where we put an independent auditor in there.
But yeah, I’ll take responsibility if we’ll also recognize the good things that happened in this state while I was governor and the hard work we put into it. Deborah and I worked 12, 15 hours. No, you don’t want to say that. We were thankful to be able to do it. But Joey (Songy, former chief of staff, current business partner) will tell you, I mean, we worked 15 hours a day. It wasn’t to try to get rich. It was because we cared about the people in the state of Mississippi, and we wanted them to do better.
Did we, did I miss some things? Absolutely. And could I go back? I would bet, dare to say, that at some point in your organization, somebody would have said, “I wish we would have caught that. We missed that.” Things happen. Bad things happen, good things happen. You can’t control every one of them. You hope and pray.
And I’m a man of faith, Anna, of strong faith. I don’t go about that using it, but I would do nothing to violate my faith, my strong belief that I have a savior and he’s forgiven me and continues to forgive my sins and my failures. And to throw all of that away over, what, some paper stock? I don’t, I don’t think so. That just wouldn’t happen.
Thank y’all, gotta go see my grandchildren. They think Papa’s a pretty good guy.
After years of budget woes, members of the Post-Secondary Board expressed surprise at a meeting Monday that the Legislature had fully funded Mississippi’s college financial aid programs this session.
This means that for the first time since 2015, the Office of Student Financial Aid will be able to award nine forgivable loan programs mainly targeting nursing and other health-related professions.
The board briefly considered reserving some of its funding,about $2.5 million from collections, for a “rainy day” — that is, a year when the Legislature is not as generous. OSFA had requested $48 million in general funds this session, and lawmakers ultimately appropriated about $50 million.
“Why do we get more than we requested?” asked Barney Daly, a board member who is the president of North Metro at Trustmark National Bank.
“I do not know what the legislators were actually thinking,” replied Jennifer Rogers, OSFA’s director.
“Have we ever gotten more than we asked for?” Daly asked again, this time chuckling.
Prior to this session, lawmakers had underfunded Mississippi’s student financial aid programs for years. From the 2019 to 2021 sessions, OSFA had to ask for a deficit appropriation — meaning it had awarded more dollars to college financial aid than lawmakers had allocated. OSFA is obligated to award financial aid to every undergraduate college studentwho applies and qualifies for one of Mississippi’s three grant programs, but it can pro-rate awards if it does not receive enough state funding.
OSFA was not receiving enough funds from the Legislature to award its forgivable loan programs. Per state statute, OSFA can award its loan programs on a first-come, first-serve basis only after every undergraduate student who applies and qualifies for a grant receives it.
“This hasn’t happened in a very long time,” said Jim Turcotte, the executive director of Mississippi College’s alumni association and the chairman of the Post-Secondary Board.
This year, OSFA will award up to about 460 students, primarily those pursuing nursing degrees. Students who met the March 30 deadline to apply have until April 30 to submit all their supporting documents. In general, through these loan programs, the state will forgive one year of a student’s loan in exchange for one year of service in Mississippi after graduation.
This surplus of funds could affect the urgency behind the Mississippi One Grant, the overhaul of state financial aid programs the Post-Secondary Board proposed last year. By rewriting the state’s existing aid programs, the board sought to address the problem of legislative underfunding by capping the annual cost of the One Grant at $48 million.
Still, some members wondered if the board should save its additional funding rather than spend it. After Rogers explained the board could choose to fund its forgivable loan programs, Turcotte asked his fellow members if it might be prudent to set aside the extra funds for a future session when the Legislature does not appropriate as much.
“As we look ahead, there will be times in the future when we will not have enough money appropriated to this board to cover the projected expenses,” Turcotte said.
“I’m just trying to look ahead because, again, I know there’ll be bleeding days ahead,” he added.
Daly asked if it was possible for the board to save the funds for a “rainy day.”
“I think if we don’t award, and we have a lot of carryover, there will be questions about why we’re carrying over a lot of money,” Rogers said.
At the meeting, the board also discussed plans to implement a new scholarship for college students who were in foster care. Rogers also updated the board on the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Summer Grant Program. For that program, Rogers’ office will award up to $3.5 million to college students who have fallen behind on courses during the pandemic. Rogers said she thinks OSFA will award all the funds this summer.
Former director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services John Davis (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
John Davis, former director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, is facing new bribery charges for his alleged role in the state’s sprawling welfare embezzlement scandal.
In the indictment unsealed Monday, prosecutors allege Davis increased federal grants to Nancy New’s nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center in exchange for payments to the luxury rehab facility where his friend and retired professional wrestler Brett DiBiase received treatment in 2019. For more than two years, Davis has faced five counts ranging from conspiracy, embezzlement and fraud. He now faces 20 counts, which includes nine new counts of bribery.
Prosecutors say the rehab payments — $40,000 per month for four months — personally benefitted Davis because he had promised to pay the rehab bill himself, so, in effect, the nonprofit extinguished his debts. Davis, who pleaded not guilty to the new charges on April 8, now technically faces almost 150 years in prison if he is convicted on all counts.
Text messages between Davis and New, obtained by Mississippi Today and reprinted here as they were written, shed light on how Davis directed New to pay for DiBiase’s rehab. Prosecutors say New and her son Zach New used grant money to make the payments.
“Just got off phone with Drs working with Brett,” Davis texted Nancy New in March of 2019, DiBiase’s second month in treatment at the luxury rehab facility called Rise in Malibu. “They think he should remain on site for another 30 days. Can you have Zack do the same thing he did to wire the same amount to them again today or first thing in the morning? This soo be the last time I ask this.”
“No problem,” Nancy New responded. “Let’s do what we need to do as many times as it takes. We are on it!”
In January 2022, the News were similarly hit with a new superseding indictment, which added the bribery and racketeering charges against them for a total of 46 counts that they each face. The News pleaded not guilty and could face hundreds of years in prison if convicted on all counts.
After several delays, more of which are possible, the state trial for the News is currently set for sometime in August or October and the Davis trial is set for Sept. 26. Both the prosecution and defense teams have asked for continuances over the last two years due to the volume of discovery and the complexity of the case.
Davis and New have tried to justify their involvement with Rise in Malibu by suggesting the welfare department was attempting to model programs after the clinic.
“At this point it’s going to take us all,” Davis texted Nancy New, referring to DiBiase’s recovery. “I want us to fly out there and let you personally see their approach. It could be something we want to model in the addiction world we are dealing with.”
The latest installment of Mississippi Today’s investigative series “The Backchannel” chronicles how then-Gov. Phil Bryant’s great-nephew similarly received special treatment from the welfare department.
The welfare agency imposes drug testing on welfare clients, which more often creates barriers to eligibility, kicking people off the program. New’s nonprofit received tens of millions from the Mississippi Department of Human Services to run a program called Families First for Mississippi, which promised to assist families “holistically,” but it did not advertise substance abuse treatment to clients.
The agency contracted with another nonprofit, Family Resource Center of North Mississippi, to run the program alongside Nancy New.
Around the time Davis was instructing Nancy New to pay Rise in Malibu, conflict was building between the Families First providers, who were competing for funding from the department.
“I am saying prayers as we need peace,” Nancy New texted Davis. “Also, In saying that I want to continue to move forward, do what you need me to do for all these wonderful people in this state who need us to help them. We are keeping our eye on the ball and don’t want to veer.”
“Amen,” Davis responded, followed a few hours later by another text: “Can you check on the transfer to Rise. They say they are not seeing it yet.”
Later that month, Nancy New texted Davis praising him for supporting DiBiase through his recovery and helping him get back on a plane headed to Malibu. In early April, Davis again told New that DiBiase’s therapist recommended he stay another 30 days and told her she could transmit the payment in the morning.
“I am glad to help in anyway I can,” she texted.
The initial indictment against Davis, filed more than two years ago in February 2020, focused more narrowly on allegations surrounding DiBiase’s rehab stint, plus that Davis directed the agency to pay DiBiase on a fraudulent contract for work he didn’t complete while he was in treatment.
Investigators from the state auditor’s office were tipped off to this alleged fraud when they learned the agency had sent DiBiase’s check to a P.O. Box belonging to Davis. Agents were trying to discern if Davis received a kickback in the exchange, according to investigative materials reviewed by Mississippi Today, but the retired wrestler told investigators he used the money to lavish his girlfriend in New Orleans.
Early on, investigators from the auditor’s office also inquired about the agency’s dealings with Brett DiBiase’s brother Ted DiBiase Jr., who collected more than $3 million in welfare funds for self-help lectures he was delivering to state employees. But as their investigation continued, they learned that the scheme ran much deeper than Davis’ odd relationship with the WWE family.
According to a forensic audit, the welfare department misused $77 million during the Davis and Bryant administrations. While Davis is on the hook for the bulk of the misspending, Mississippi Today’s investigation reveals how Bryant, who has not faced any allegations of wrongdoing, wielded influence over the director’s decisions.
The new indictment against Davis notes that the News used the money they allegedly bribed Davis to pay them to make investments in a company called Prevacus, which was developing a treatment for concussions, and its offshoot PreSolMD. Text messages between Bryant and the owner of Prevacus show the outgoing governor was prepared to strike a business deal with the company, until arrests derailed the arrangement.
After Mississippi Today’s story broke, the NAACP wrote a letter asking for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the former governor’s actions, but federal officials have yet to acknowledge the recent revelations.
Noah McRae was the kind of kid who, if you said the sky is blue, would argue it is red until he was ready to fight.
Growing up in the Jackson suburbs, McRae had problems with authority and his temper. His parents divorced. He bounced from school to school, and he eventually started using drugs.
But he had at least one thing going for him that other young men didn’t: His great-uncle is Phil Bryant, Mississippi’s governor from 2012 to 2020.
And the governor had two things: A friend named Nancy New and a welfare department with millions in flexible cash and free rein to hire whomever it wanted. Both came in handy when McRae needed some help.
Bryant’s subordinates and friends helped McRae secure a spot at an exclusive school, a job after he was expelled and specialized supervision.
And according to records recently obtained by Mississippi Today, federal investigators have been told New even paid for McRae to go to rehab.
An early assist came when McRae was having difficulty in school. His family eventually linked up with Nancy New’s private New Summit School in Jackson. New was a campaigncontributor to Phil Bryant and worked closely with his wife, Deborah, the sister of McRae’s grandmother.
Mississippi’s current governor Tate Reeves even used the Jackson school as a film location for his campaign advertisement, which aired in 2019 while New was under state investigation for fraud and theft related to the massive contracts her nonprofit received from the welfare department under Bryant’s administration.
Agents from the state auditor’s office arrested New, her son Zach New and Bryant’s former welfare director John Davis in early 2020 in what officials have called the largest public embezzlement scheme in state history. Each of them pleaded not guilty and still await trial while the governor, despite his involvement with the players in the case, appears to have coasted.
But at the time, New was well-known in political circles. Prominent state figures touted her school for its work in educating children with intellectual disabilities and for taking students with behavioral problems.
McRae had been diagnosed with ADD, anxiety and a visual processing disorder called Irlen Syndrome, according to court documents, so his family felt fortunate that he landed a spot at the school.
“The governor pulled strings to get him in there,” said Darin Cooper, McRae’s stepfather.
Because of Noah McRae’s relationship to the governor, Cooper said the family paid a discounted tuition at New Summit.
It didn’t work out as hoped, but McRae still managed to get a safety net.
“He got expelled from there,” Cooper said, and then the school “turned around and hired him as a groundskeeper.”
The New Summit School in Jackson, formerly run by Nancy New and her son Zach New. Both were arrested in 2020 on charges they allegedly stole $4 million in Mississippi welfare dollars. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Things were not quite what they seemed at the school, either. Federal prosecutors say that for four years the News filed fraudulent claims to illegally collect millions in public school dollars typically reserved for kids who have mental health disorders and need hospitalization. Nancy and Zach New also pleaded not guilty and still await trial in that separate federal case.
Cooper said the family believes McRae was one of the students whose names the News used to draw down the funds.
“We had a lot of hope in that school,” Cooper said. “It was real big for the family when he got admitted to that school. They were promising to fix everything, you know, and turn him around.”
McRae never made it past 10th grade. Shortly after in April of 2017, police in neighboring Madison arrested the 18-year-old McRae after he and his friends broke into several vehicles, stealing guns and other items.
McRae pleaded guilty in June of 2017 to three counts of auto burglary, according to the court file obtained by Mississippi Today. McRae agreed to be a sheriff’s trusty, which kept him out of the penitentiary. But after just shy of a year, officials terminated him from the program for cause. He sat in jail for five months until his sentencing. By then, he’d been locked up for about a year-and-a-half.
Madison County Circuit Court Judge Steve Ratcliff sentenced McRae to seven years in prison, four years suspended, meaning he only had to serve three years. With credit for the 18 months he had already been incarcerated, McRae had served half of his sentence and was parole eligible. The Mississippi Department of Corrections released him about a month later.
A few weeks after leaving prison, New’s nonprofit began paying the 19-year-old small, sporadic payments, records obtained by Mississippi Today show. He was paid under a welfare-funded program called Families First for Mississippi, according to the ledger of purchases.
While New’s nonprofit claimed to provide reentry services to people leaving the correctional system, New stressed to Mississippi Today in 2018 that Families First did not provide direct assistance to clients.
So it’s not clear what McRae may have been doing in exchange for the payments, but it wasn’t long until an exchange of text messages indicated that something was amiss with the young man. State employed welfare officials were spending work hours trying to keep an eye on him.
Credit: Graphic by Bethany Atkinson
Eventually, Gov. Bryant would take concerns about McRae to his appointed welfare director John Davis, according to text messages Mississippi Today obtained and have reprinted here as they appear without correction.
“The boy needs help quickly or he is going to fall badly. Thanks for all your have done,” Bryant said in a text to Davis on April 1, 2019.
The request brought the combined resources and interests of the state’s welfare department and New’s nonprofit together for another attempt to help McRae. It’s unclear how far that help went.
Former Gov. Phil Bryant
“I’m sure I told John at some point, ‘This is a tragedy and we’re worried about his health,’ and John would have said, ‘Let me help you with him,’” Bryant said in a recent interview with Mississippi Today when asked about the connection between McRae and the welfare agency.
According to the texts, Bryant was specifically asking Davis for information about how to get his great-nephew into a treatment program, but an individual with close ties to the welfare scandal says McRae received much more than a referral.
In a transcript from a 2021 interview with federal investigators, the person told agents that New said she paid for McRae to go to rehab.
Bryant told Mississippi Today in a recent interview that he did not recall New paying for his great-nephew to go to rehab, but that he felt it might be an appropriate use of her resources.
“I don’t know all the guidelines, but for an agency that works with the Department of Human Services and I don’t remember her doing it, but saying, ‘We think we can pay for a rehab of this very fragile, indigent child. We think that’s the right thing to do,’ would not have shocked me,” Bryant said. “I would not have said, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, let me go read the code books and make sure we can do all of that.’”
Investigators did not immediately ask follow-up questions about the alleged payment, moving on to other topics, according to the transcript. The interviewee said they didn’t know which facility McRae went to, but that he was in treatment around the same time that New and Davis allegedly sent professional wrestler Brett DiBiase to a luxury rehab clinic on the taxpayer’s dime. That began in February 2019. DiBiase pleaded guilty to defrauding the state – collecting money for work he didn’t do while he was in rehab – in December 2020.
New had a strong motivation to keep Bryant and Davis happy. Under the two men’s leadership, the Mississippi Department of Human Services had started funneling tens of millions from the federal welfare program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to New’s nonprofit through a no-bid contract.
The idea was for her nonprofit, Mississippi Community Education Center, to run a state-sanctioned initiative called Families First for Mississippi, which Gov. Bryant frequently touted as part of his plan to help poor people get off welfare. Bryant has not been accused of misconduct and has denied any wrongdoing.
Drug rehab payments have played a key role in the welfare scandal.
It has been widely reported that Families First paid the $160,000 tab for retired wrestler Brett DiBiase to stay four months at the Rise in Malibu, Calif., which bills itself as a luxury rehab center with “private en suite rooms, majestic ocean views, world-class treatment and luxurious accommodations.” Prosecutors say the payments were made using welfare funds.
John Davis, former director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services
Brett DiBiase is the son of Ted DiBiase Sr., who WWE fans know as “The Million Dollar Man.” The dad also received welfare funding in his role as a Christian minister. Brett DiBiase was one of six people arrested in the welfare fraud case, and he’s since flipped to aid the prosecution.
Jackson attorney Scott Gilbert, who represented McRae in his 2017 car burglary case, currently represents the other son, Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr., another character in the scandal who received more than $3 million in federal funding to make motivational presentations to welfare department staffers and other state employees. Gilbert said his office does not comment on their client representation.
In the indictment against Davis, prosecutors allege the welfare director conspired with New to use the taxpayer money her nonprofit received to pay for Brett DiBiase’s drug treatment in Malibu.
States are allowed to use some Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funding to pay for substance abuse treatment for needy, qualified residents, a progressive policy focused on meeting the actual needs of families.
But in Families First’s many million-dollar promotional campaigns, brochures and thousands of dollars worth of spots on radio stations, the program did not advertise that families could receive drug treatment through the program.
In fact, Bryant previously signed and publicly lauded a new law that requires applicants and recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to take drug screenings and tests or face rejection from the program. The policy became a significant barrier to eligibility, even for people who don’t abuse substances, because applicants must find transportation to the testing clinic.
Throughout January and February of 2019, Mississippi Community Education Center paid Noah McRae several small, sporadic payments totaling about $1,500, ledgers obtained by Mississippi Today show. Officials have told Mississippi Today that these ledgers likely contain errors and omissions, especially since nonprofit officials had been transferring funds between several different bank accounts.
Nancy New, founder of Mississippi Community Education Center and owner of New Summit School
Under the Families First program, it was common for employees to appear as if they were working for the Mississippi Department of Human Services but receive their paycheck from the nonprofit, whose expenses were shielded from public view.
By March, McRae had stopped receiving funds from Families First, according to the ledger, but Davis and his communications director Lynne Myers were still discussing McRae as if he were a rogue agency employee.
“I’m needing your direction on how you would like me to handle Noah,” Myers messaged Davis in early March. “He has not been at work since last Wednesday … He hasn’t shown up at all this week and I can’t get him on his cell. How would you like me to proceed?”
It’s unclear what position McRae may have held at the nonprofit or welfare department or what qualifications he possessed for the job. Current MDHS leadership says there is no record of McRae’s employment at the agency.
In the weeks after Myers reached out, Davis sent McRae several text messages asking the governor’s great-nephew to meet with him or call him. It’s unclear why the director would have had a direct line to a Families First client or employee, let alone one at McRae’s level, as that kind of exchange was not common.
When asked why welfare officials would have been texting with McRae, Bryant responded, “because he was my great-nephew.”
Credit: Graphic by Bethany Atkinson
Finally, Nancy New chimed in. In late March 2019, New messaged Davis and Myers, “I have an update on Noah McRae.”
“Is he okay?” Myers responded.
No texts on the group chat follow.
Less than a week later, Gov. Bryant himself messaged Davis about his great-nephew.
“Would you have a number for David at Region 8. Trying to get Noah into a treatment program,” Bryant wrote on April 1. “The boy needs help quickly or he is going to fall badly. Thanks for all your have done. He has to do some of this own his own but David can tell is what he thinks is best for him.”
David Van is the director for Region 8, the Community Mental Health Center in the Jackson-metro area. The Community Mental Health Centers are a series of quasi-public-private clinics and treatment facilities that accept payment on a sliding scale depending on what a person can afford.
Van told Mississippi Today it was not unusual for the governor to call him, asking for help guiding constituents to services, but that he did not remember ever talking to John Davis or triaging someone named Noah McRae.
Davis and New are bound by gag orders which prevent them from speaking to the media about their cases. Their attorneys declined to answer questions for this series. Myers would not respond to Mississippi Today’s calls to offer further context about her involvement with McRae. Myers has not faced any charges, but agents from the auditor’s office did interview her early on in their investigation about why she moved merchandise purchased with taxpayer money from state property to the nonprofit after the state placed Davis on administrative leave in June 2019, according to a recording of the interview.
Myers took over the communications division in the fall of 2018 right after her predecessor, Paul Nelson, became the subject of a complaint for failing to release public records in a timely manner. The agency was soundproofing itself, forcing all agency communication with reporters to go through the attorney general’s office. It also enacted a media policy that reporters must submit all questions for the agency in writing, which it would often not answer.
Credit: Graphic by Bethany Atkinson
Davis and New’s involvement with McRae isn’t the only example of the welfare officials helping a colleague deal with a family member in addiction.
Texts show the assistant attorney general assigned to MDHS sought help from Davis and New for his coworker’s son, who was at the time checking into Pine Grove, an addiction treatment facility in Hattiesburg. The son worked for MDHS’s child support contractor before he passed away in 2021. “I will reach out to Dr. New,” the assistant attorney wrote in late June of 2019, after Bryant kicked the director out of office but before Davis announced his retirement publicly. “Again, thanks for all you have done.”
In general, Davis and New ran a government program rampant with nepotism, texts show.
The welfare-funded Families First program also hired Myers’ husband, Kevin Myers, former director of the Department of Public Safety’s administrative operations, as a community liaison. He pulled a salary of at least $86,000 from New’s nonprofit, according to its ledger. Text messages show that Davis also secured a job at Families First for their daughter Mason Myers, who was paid roughly $600 a week, the ledger shows.
Credit: Graphic by Bethany Atkinson
“You have blessed our family greatly John, and I just needed to tell you you’re awesome and we are so grateful,” Lynne Myers texted Davis in mid-June of 2019, about a week before he would face his first polygraph test in connection with the audit of his department.
Myers previously served as the special projects coordinator for Bryant’s office. On LinkedIn, she described herself as a network account executive for TeleSouth Communications, also known as Supertalk radio, beginning in 2017. She was director of communications for MDHS in 2018 and 2019. SuperTalk radio is a hyper-conservative talk radio station that state agencies pay hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars each year in exchange for advertising and, in some cases, the luxury of soft-ball interviews for state bureaucrats.
New’s nonprofit funneled nearly $330,000 in MDHS funds to the station, a 2020 audit report shows.
Davis had close communication with Supertalk CEO Kim Dillon and the two would discuss the progress of her son Logan Dillon, who worked as a lobbyist for the welfare department.
“Everybody tells me how great Logan is doing,” Davis once texted the CEO. “I’m so proud of him.”
A couple months before Davis abruptly retired, Kim Dillon invited the welfare director out to dinner at Tico’s Steakhouse in Ridgeland.
“I talked with Logan last night and told him I had dinner with you. I didn’t go into what all we talked about but did let him know. I appreciate everything you have done for him!” Dillon texted Davis in early May of 2019.
While the good ole boy system in Mississippi’s government provided McRae opportunities and second-chances not enjoyed by most, the alleged scheme also exploited McRae.
Prosecutors say the News converted at least some of the public school funds they allegedly bilked in the name of students like McRae to their own personal use.
“From what we understand with the private school, they were receiving a bunch of state or federal funds and pocketing them,” Cooper, McRae’s stepdad, said. “None of them ever went to Noah. No help ever went to Noah from those people. They were just using his name as a shell to collect government funds.”
Despite gaining a spot at New’s private school, a job on the campus and Families First, and supervision from powerful bureaucrats, McRae didn’t achieve a better outcome.
After McRae’s time under the wing of the welfare department and Families First, he went back to breaking into cars in late 2019 and wound up convicted of conspiracy to commit auto burglary in neighboring Rankin County.
In February 2021, a couple months after the birth of his daughter, McRae pleaded guilty and a judge sentenced him to five years in prison, according to MDOC records.
He is currently incarcerated at Leake County Correctional Facility.
This is Part 5 in Mississippi Today’s series “The Backchannel,” which examines former Gov. Phil Bryant’s role in the running of his welfare department during what officials have called the largest public embezzlement scheme in state history.
