The lawyer hired to investigate a massive welfare scandal in Mississippi which includes NFL legend Brett Favre has reportedly been fired.
According to Mississippi Today, the state welfare department has fired Brad Pigott, the former U.S. attorney in charge of the investigation. The decision comes one week after Pigott filed a subpoena on the University of Southern Mississippi to determine why and how the school’s athletic department received $5 million in welfare funds to build a new volleyball stadium.
“All I did, and I believe all that caused me to be terminated from representing the department or having anything to do with the litigation, was to try to get the truth about all of that,” Pigott told Mississippi Today. “People are going to go to jail over this, at least the state should be willing to find out the truth of what happened.”
Favre has been potentially implicated in this scandal in multiple ways. Recently, private school and non-profit founder Nancy New alleged in a court filing that former Mississippi governor Phil Bryant authorized her to pay Favre more than $1.1 million in welfare funds.
Favre was reportedly ordered to pay back $828,000 worth of welfare funds back in the fall. The Hall of Famer paid back $600,000, but not the rest.
As for the $5 million payment to USM, Pigott was investigating Favre’s potential involvement. In addition to being a USM alum and Mississippi native, Favre’s daughter played volleyball at USM in 2017 and 2018.
In an interview with the New York Times, Pigott claims Favre that Favre had pledged to donate $5 million to the construction of the volleyball complex.
“Pigott claims that Favre, instead of writing the check, asked the Mississippi Community Education Center to fund the project.” writes Pro Football Talk. “And the Mississippi Community Education Center was at the heart of the distribution of federal welfare money in a way that has created a major controversy in one of the nation’s poorest states.
“Pigott told the Times that the center paid the $5 million, and then ‘disguised it as a payment for use of university facilities that did not occur.’”
Not surprisingly, Pigott is claiming he was fired because he was coming close to uncovering how deeply involved Bryant and Favre were. We’ll see if his claims go anywhere in the coming months.