These days Congressman John Conyers, Michigan Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has taken to introducing his wife by her maiden name, Monica Eskers.
But in Detroit, where she’s now being squeezed by the feds to accept a plea deal ahead of being indicted for bribery, she’s known as Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers.
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Detroit media have reported that the councilwoman was videotaped accepting a bribe payment – which with others totaled $6,000 – to buy her vote for a $1.2 billion city sludge-disposal contract. Conyers originally opposed the contract, but changed her mind, swinging her vote for a 5-4 approval.
She’s now mulling over a plea, but a deal has been stalled because she wants to stay out of jail and be charged with nothing more than a misdemeanor, not the 5-year felony offered by prosecutors.
Conyers’ criminal woes are the latest produced by a years-long, wide-ranging FBI investigation into public corruption in Detroit. It’s had a lot to work with, although the highest profile crook to date, convicted felon and former mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick, was brought down in a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation by The Detroit Free Press.
Also reportedly under federal investigation are the disgraced mayor’s father, Bernard N. Kilpatrick, a self-described business consultant, for taking $25,000 to grease the same sewage contract (his ex-wife and the ex-mayor’s mother is U.S. Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick); city councilmember and ex-U.S. Congresswoman Barbara-Rose Collins, who is better known for wearing a princess tiara to council on her 70th birthday than any legislative achievements; and councilwoman Martha Reeves, who began her term by campaigning to have statues erected downtown of Motown’s best-known artists – including herself. Both Collins and Reeves also voted for the sludge contract.
The squeeze was put on Monica Conyers when James Rosendall Jr. resigned as vice president of Texas sludge recycler Synagro Technologies and pleaded guilty to bribery conspiracy in January; and Rayford Jackson, a sub-rosa dealmaker, pleaded guilty this week to arranging the bribes.
A local TV news wunderkind, Fox 2 anchorwoman Fanchon Stinger, was fired by the station after it became known that she showed up with Jackson to promote the sludge contract to a community group.
Before earning notoriety in the bribe scandal, Monica Conyers was a darling of YouTubers for calling Detroit City Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. “Shrek” in open session, then losing a Detroit News-sponsored videotaped debate with an 8th-grade girl who questioned the councilwoman’s behavior. Since entering Detroit politics, she has also been in a bar fight, threatened to shoot somebody, and to have someone else beaten.
With Detroit facing an election primary in August, Cockrel this week said he hopes federal investigators get on with their indictments.
“I know in my experience with federal investigations, they tend to be slow and meticulous,” he said, “but when they come, they come like a ton of bricks. My feeling is if they’re going to come like a ton of bricks, they ought to come now.”
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1 Comments
#1. Hermoine Couther 06.20.2009
I hope the Feds have what they need to take Monica down. She has been out of control for a very long time.
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