Jackson Free Press

Jonathan Lee supporters are using a Clarion-Ledger article to defend a controversy he's mired in—but it actually helps build the case that he was dishonest about his position at the company.

My email today is absolutely filled with city politics. I just came out of a meeting and discovered that the Jackson 20/20 PAC that we wrote about in this earlier story has now endorsed candidates other than Jonathan Lee (when we wrote the story, all the money had gone to pay Lee's campaign folks). Attorney Dorsey Carson sent an email out inviting people to meet the candidates today at Hal & Mal's.

In response, attorney and Harvey Johnson supporter Sam Begley replied to Carson, copying me, a local blog and The Clarion-Ledger reporter who made Lee supporters very happy this weekend by reporting that Begley had sent an email to someone linking to judgments against Lee (a story we broke last Wednesday--but based on an envelope of documents, not on that email which we did not receive). In those replies, Begley accuses the 20/20 PAC of "laundering" money to Lee's campaign.

Here is the 1/31/13 Jackson 20/20 campaign finance report.

Begley also included links to other potential judgments against Mississippi Products Inc., Lee's family company. Rather than try to sort it all out immediately, I'm pasting the entire email thread below, as well as the invitation to the PAC's candidate gathering. (I also have some other comments about The Clarion-Ledger story this weekend, but this post is confusing enough, so I will blog it separately.)

We in no way endorse Begley's accusations in the emails. We are posting this for the public to examine yourself.

Here are the emails; the most recent one is on the top:

Dorsey, Being the sage lawyer you are perhaps you can explain why, with the only documents of record with the Mississippi Secretary of State showing Jonathan Lee as the President of Mississippi Products,Inc., the decision makers for your PAC would endorse a man for mayor whose company can't pay its bills, to the tune of $170,000, and lets default judgments be taken, then hides from WJTV and evades questions from the Jackson Free Press., and tells us he never owned the company and hasnt been associated with it for more than a year. Oh, and it looks like MPI has an answer due on a complaint brought by yet one more of its vendors. see link below and documents attached. Please tell us that this is just a business dispute that happens all the time. SAM

Hinds County Civil Case Detail: Diversey Inc. v. Mississippi Products Inc.

On 4/29/2013 4:25 PM, Carson, Dorsey wrote: I'll resist the urge to respond, Sam. If the media wants a comment, then I'll be more than happy to provide one on the record.

Dorsey

From: Sam Begley [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 4:17 PM To: Carson, Dorsey Cc: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: After work "MEET THE CANDIDATES" hosted by Jackson 20/20 from 5:00-6:30 p.m. TODAY: Jonathan Lee, Kevin Lavine, Joseph Kendrick, and De'Keither Stamps

Thanks Dorsey. The "multi candidate endorsement" appears to be a nice way to launder money intended for Jonathan Lee …

I will soon launch our first eBook in a new "Ghosts of Hinds County" series. The first will focus on the juvenile-detention scandal of the 1990s. If you want to hear about it right away, please subscribe (free) to jfpdaily.com. We will announce it to the daily list as soon as it's live.

(An added benefit to subscribing: You get daily breaking news on weekdays and invitations to all our big events, including the Best of Jackson party, so there's that.)

The launch will originally scheduled for early May, but election coverage conspired against me. If you have something you think you could add to a piece about the juvenile detention days of old, please email me at [email protected]. We can talk confidentially if needed.

Looks like both property and violent crime rates continue to drop across the city, according to the latest COMSTAT numbers released by the Jackson Police Department.

The report for April 15-21, which you can read here, details how, across the board, property crime is down 18.5 percent year-to-date and violent crime is down six percent.

The biggest drops in rates appear to be in business burglary and grand larceny, which are down 43.3 percent and 45.1 percent, respectively. There have been 114 business burglaries to date in 2013, compared to 201 in 2012, and there have been 150 acts of grand larceny in 2013, down from 273 year-to-date in 2012. Auto burglaries have also fallen off at a rate of 41.7 percent (74 YTD compared to 127 last year).

Homicides, which have been a hot topic of discussion in recent weeks, are down 33.3 percent (14 in 2013 to 21 in 2012).

There were some trouble spots in the report as well. There has been a rash of house burglaries in the past week in Precinct 3, which covers Northwest Jackson from I-220 to Mill Street. Police responded to 16 house burglaries, four of which took place in the Queens neighborhood between Flag Chapel Road and Magnolia Road.

Precinct 2, which spans from West Hwy. 80 to I-55 through the downtown area, saw a congestion of house burglaries near Washington Addition and between Terry Road and Gallatin Street. Police responded to eight auto thefts last week alone. But looking at the bigger picture, crime is down this year 23.6 in that precinct, traditionally Jackson's most dangerous.

I was just at the Hinds County Circuit Clerk's doing research for a story , and a couple of employees were talking about a mini-plague of serpents in the basement office.

This week, employees have stumbled across five earth snakes in the file room, Circuit Clerk Barbara Dunn said. Earth snakes are nonvenomous and grow up to around 8 inches. Employees said they have been unable to ascertain how the asps are getting in the building.

The thing that really made my skin crawl, though, was being charged $1 per page to make copies. Mississippi has some of the nation's worst open-records laws, which makes a lot of documents public but lets government agencies charge whatever they want. What stung the most was that I had to make the copies myself, and still had to fork out $84 for a pretty skimpy stack of paper (pictured).

Where's Nick Fury when you need him?

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2013/apr/24/11644/

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2013/apr/24/11645/