Last April, the nonprofit newsroom Mississippi Today published its five-part series, The Backchannel, exposing new evidence of former Gov. Phil Bryant’s role in a welfare scandal involving $77 million in misspent funds, based primarily on an extraordinary trove of text messages obtained by investigative reporter Anna Wolfe.
Each story in the series explores “an aspect of Bryant’s entanglement with the welfare agency’s spending — whether the ties to his personal business dealings, his relationships with players in the scheme, patterns in his leadership, agency directives or nepotism,” Wolfe writes in the introductory article.
In October 2021, an independent auditor contracted to examine state welfare spending from 2016 to 2019 found only 40% out of $126 million in examined funds was properly spent. Nearly 19% of Mississippians live in poverty, the highest state rate in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. Bryant was Mississippi governor from 2012 to 2020.
“Bryant’s backchannel maneuvering, uncovered by Mississippi Today’s investigation, raises questions about the governor’s personal agenda and influence over his welfare officials, which auditors say misspent at least $77 million in funds that were supposed to assist the state’s poorest residents,” Wolfe writes in part one of the series.
As a result of the series, U.S. Congressman Bennie Thompson, who represents much of western Mississippi, has urged the U.S. Attorney General and Department of Justice to investigate Bryant, and Thompson has promised to hold hearings. Mississippi Today has also received overwhelmingly positive feedback from their audience.
One current welfare agency employee who oversees grant spending told the news organization, “I’m glad that you didn’t stop because most of this would have never come out if it had not been for you. Everyone I talk to feels that way.”
Wolfe’s investigation began in 2017, when she was a reporter with The Clarion Ledger, a daily newspaper in Jackson with a statewide circulation.
“The state was approving just 1.4% of applicants for welfare,” Wolfe recalls. “I knew that we were still getting federal money every year to provide cash welfare and other supports and services to families in poverty. And I knew that it wasn’t going to direct cash assistance to families, and I wanted to know where the state was spending the rest of the money. So, I started putting in public records requests at that time.”
Through years of filing records requests and building sources, by early 2022 Wolfe had obtained the texts to and from Bryant detailing the former governor’s involvement in how the public funds were used.
Telling the story meant sifting through thousands of messages between Bryant and others, including former NFL quarterback Brett Favre, former professional wrestler Ted DiBiase — known as “The Million Dollar Man” — and other members of the DiBiase family.
“Lots of these text messages were technically public record,” Wolfe says. “They were sent from the governor about government business and therefore should have been retained and considered public. But we did not receive them through public channels.”
The texts, obtained through a confidential source, revealed such a large number of people involved in the scheme that Wolfe decided to create a character guide. It’s an idea she says she got from journalist Curtis Wilkie’s 2010 book “The Fall of the House of Zeus.”
Also prominently involved in the scandal were John Davis, former head of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, and Nancy New, founder and director of the nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center, through which millions in federal welfare dollars flowed, including $2 million to Prevacus, a pharmaceutical company Favre had invested in.
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