(WWJ) — On the same day he addressed members of the Oakland County Republican Party in Novi, reports came to light Wednesday that federal prosecutors recently filed new allegations against former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.
In a recent filing that surfaced hours ahead of Kilpatrick’s speech at the GOP’s Lincoln Day Dinner, prosecutors allege that he is pretending to live in Georgia in order to avoid paying back nearly $832,000 in restitution in connection with the public corruption case that led to his ouster as mayor.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Nathan wrote in the filing that the government “strongly suspects he simply seeks to delay the inevitable, and only waste time and resources," according to a report from The Detroit Free Press, as the government continues to try to get him to pay the restitution.
While Kilpatrick’s prison sentence was commuted three years ago by former President Donald Trump, federal authorities say he still owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution following his conviction of numerous felonies, including federal racketeering and defrauding taxpayers.
"Although Kilpatrick has claimed a residence in Georgia, the address he claims to be his residence is listed for sale and appears to be staged or vacant," Nathan wrote according to the Freep report. The attorney, however, says that Kilpatrick really lives in Novi and that his Georgia home is listed for sale at nearly $500,000, according to the report.
Earlier this year federal prosecutors said more than $6,700 belonging to Kilpatrick was found while searching for assets to pay off his debt to the taxpayers. The ex-mayor is fighting efforts from the government to keep that money.
Kilpatrick, however, says he doesn’t owe any type of debt to the federal government. He told WWJ’s Darrylin Horne in an interview ahead of Wednesday’s Lincoln Day speech that the restitution amount was attached to a plea agreement that he says was overturned by a judge. He says that amount was not tied to any specific losses by the city or any loss on a federal level.
“That $800,000 was tied to a restitution amount that was made up for the purposes of a plea deal. It’s not tied to any specific loss or any specific money. No loss, nothing in the city that was taken, that was stolen. And I think there’s just so much misinformation on that,” Kilpatrick said.
“The judge in that case, he overturned and repealed the plea agreement and sent me to prison. And the very last thing he did was, he made that a condition of parole,” Kilpatrick said, noting he got out of state prison he paid on that amount for a time.
“And then I had an unconditional release of parole. So I’ve been arguing that that’s zero. There’s absolutely loss to the city or on the federal side either. I don’t have a charge or conviction of stealing any money or misusing any public funds at all,” he said.
In the recent court filing, prosecutors say they have evidence that Kilpatrick has been living in Michigan for months, including mail from the U.S. attorney’s office to his Georgia address that has either been returned or forwarded and re-routed to Michigan, according to the Free Press report.