On Thursday, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, and Ward 6 Councilman Aaron Banks all pleaded not guilty to an array of federal charges as part of a bribery investigation by the FBI. The trio stands accused of weaving a convoluted web of backdoor dealings in order to enrich themselves.
Since 2008, the city of Jackson has sought to develop a plot of land adjacent to the downtown Convention Center Complex. A multi-million-dollar loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was taken by the city to facilitate this development, contingent upon a deadline of June 30, 2025, to complete the project.
Owens, along with Jackson businessman Sherik Marve Smith, a relative of Owens, is said to have orchestrated a bribery conspiracy to ensure that two specific real estate developers from Nashville would be the party that won the project and that it passed approval from the city council. What Owens, Smith, and three other co-conspirators didn’t know was that they were doing business with undercover FBI agents.
According to court records unsealed Thursday, Owens was introduced by an unidentified witness to one of the undercover agents at a business owned by the DA in downtown Jackson in August of 2023. Two months later, Owens, Smith, and others took a private jet paid for by the FBI to meet with the fake developers in Nashville. At that meeting, Owens told the developers that he could effectively deliver the project to them – specifically because he and Smith “own enough of the city” to “get votes approved.”
During Owens’ re-election party in November of 2023, Owens apparently made it clear that his position as district attorney was simply an avenue for development opportunities.
“The full-time job is developing… This is the part-time job, to get leverage for the full-time job,” Owens told the pair of FBI agents, unprompted. “This is the part-time job to get the conversations and the access. Access equals the other s*** we’re trying to do.”
Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens speaks about how
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