Tis a question that has dominated Mississippi politics: Who gave Anna Wolfe the private text messages of former Governor Phil Bryant, Brett Favre, and others linked to the DHS scandal? Her expose was no small feat as it rocked Mississippi and won the Barksdale Today reporter a Pulitzer Prize. However, Bryant's legal team thinks it has uncovered her source.
The text messages revealed a Brett Favre who saw a chance to cash out on an up and coming company that coincidentally was at the centre of the DHS scandal, Prevacus. The company hoped to obtain government funding to allegedly fund its development of a concussion drug while DHS just so happened to have plenty of government funding in the form of barely supervised grants. Two sides of the equation, both wanting cash, is a recipe for business success or corruption.Text messages obtained by Mississippi Today reveal NFL quarterback Brett Favre briefed Gov. Bryant about the flow of state grant funds to his experimental drug project, a deal that was shielded from public view. Bryant was all set to accept stock in the company hours after he left office — then arrests were made. Former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant used the authority of his office, the weight of his political influence and the power of his connections to help his friend and retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre boost a fledgling pharmaceutical venture. Then he tried to cash in on the project when he left office, text messages show. Favre believed he could make millions as an early investor in a drug company. He just needed a little more political and financial capital to push the enterprise into the end zone. “It’s 3rd and long and we need you to make it happen!!” Favre wrote to the governor in late December 2018, according to text messages recently obtained by Mississippi Today. “I will open a hole,” Bryant responded, piggybacking on the football metaphor. Less than a week later, Favre would meet with Bryant’s welfare officials to strike a deal for a $1.7 million investment in the biomedical startup Prevacus, which promised it had found a treatment for concussions. Prosecutors now say that money was stolen from a federal program intended to serve the state’s poorest residents – a pot of money that had virtually no oversight.
Bryant said he did not introduce Prevacus to Nancy New, the nonprofit director who made the payments and now faces bribery, racketeering and embezzlement charges. But newly uncovered text messages show that, at the very least, Favre told Bryant that New had started funneling public funding to the drug company shortly after he began advocating on its behalf. As governor, Bryant assisted Prevacus, the company at the center of Mississippi’s ongoing welfare embezzlement scandal, in finding investors and gaining favor with federal regulators. Then, two days after he left office, Bryant agreed by text to accept stock in the company. “Now that you’re unemployed I’d like to give you a company package for all your help,” Prevacus founder Jake Vanlandingham wrote in a Jan. 16, 2020, text. “…We want and need you on our team!!!” “Sounds good,” responded the former governor, who was getting ready to take over a private sector lobbying firm. “Where would be the best place to meet. I am now going to get on it hard…”. Rest of article.
Pretty juicy stuff. It is quite reasonable to ask who gave Wolfe copies of the text messages. Reasonable because many of the texts were between private individuals such as Favre and Vanlandingham, texts that would not be accessible as public records.
Only someone with subpoena power had access to those text messages. It is a pretty safe bet prosecutors and defense lawyers did not leak the texts, especially since Circuit Judge Adrienne Wooten issued a gag order.
The former Governor sued Barksale Today and its publisher Mary White for defamation in Madison County Circuit Court in July 2022. Armed with the powers of discovery, the former Governor launched a crusade to uncover Wolfe's sources. Earlier post.
Bryant first asked for Wolfe's communications with Pigott, Thomas Bufkin, and Jacob Black. Although the First Amendment usually protects a reporter from revealing sources, it does not protect a source from discovery.
Circuit Judge Brad Mills dismissed the lawsuit in 2025 but the Mississippi Supreme Court reinstated it in April after Bryant appealed.
A newly-energized Phil Bryant went back to work in trying to find out the source who leaked the texts to Anna Wolfe.
Bryant subpoenaed Darra Woolman to appear at the law office of McCraney, Montagnet, Quinn, & Noble for deposition on August 10. The subpoena demands Woolman produce all communications with Wolfe.
Who is Darra Woolman and why does the former Governor have such a strong interest in her? The subpoena sheds some light on who was feeding privileged information to Anna Wolfe:
You were employed by Coxwell & Associates, PLLC, when its attorneys represented former Mississippi Department of Human Services (“MDHS”) Executive Director John Davis. The plaintiffs understand that you leaked confidential file materials to Mississippi Today and Anna Wolfe while you were employed with Coxwell & Associates, PLLC, and that your leak of these confidential file materials resulted in Coxwell & Associates, PLLC, terminating your employment. This subpoena relates to your production of these confidential file materials to Mississippi Today and Wolfe.
The esteemed defense attorney declined to comment on the subject of his former employee but a source said he had reported the incident to the Bar upon its discovery.
There is another Bryant subpoena that is almost as curious as the Woolman subpoena . The plaintiff subpoenaed Carol Burnett of Ocean Springs for deposition on August 3 and copies of all communications with Anna Wolfe and Sports Illustrated.
1. Produce all communications, documents, and things that you have sent to and received from Mississippi Today and/or any representative or agent of Mississippi Today, including, but not limited to, Anna Wolfe, Adam Ganucheau, and attorneys, paralegals, or other persons affiliated with an attorney or law firm that represents Mississippi Today.2. Produce all communications, documents, and things that you have sent to and received from Michael Rosenberg and/or any other person affiliated with Sports Illustrated, including, but not limited to, attorneys, paralegals, or other persons affiliated with an attorney or law firm that represents Sports Illustrated.
Rosenberg penned a piece for his magazine on Brett Favre's role in the DHS scandal, The Driving Force: How Brett Favre's Demands For Cash Fueled a Welfare Scandal. Article The story quoted Burnett:
Bryant’s lawyers would later say he had “no knowledge of or involvement in” the meeting or the $4 million commitment. But Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative founder Carol Burnett, who worked in MDHS in the early 2000s, tells SI, “The head of DHS doesn’t make those decisions without the governor’s knowledge and approval. That is just unfathomable to me.”
Burnett filed a motion to quash the subpoena. The motion argues:
the subpoena challenged herein bears no relation to the reasonable requirements of trial preparation and discovery, and upon inspection cand upon information and belief is clearly intended to subject Movant to undue burdens and costs as punishment for having contributed to the discovery of Plaintiff Phil Bryant’s administration’s multiple misdirections of restricted federal TANF funds...
Judge Mills scheduled a hearing on the motion for September 9 at 9 in Rankin County Circuit Court.
Stay tuned, folks. There may be some fireworks.
25 comments:
Deputy Pheel just won't let it go.
Did Wolfe/Ganucheau know the documents were stolen documents subject to privilege? And did they know before or after they got them? Did they help? Did they offer Daar protection or anything of value?
There’s your actual malice argument.
Always an audit trail. When truth hits you in the face, what are you, the voter going to do? Cover it up, punish the informers and keep the same ole good boy system alive. Backwards as hell but Mississippi has lots of poor people to receive federal dollars. That is their slush fund that keeps the country club going.
Wolfe is the equivalent to a one-hit wonder and without the leaked materials she'd still be toiling in relative anonymity working for an outfit that can't move the needle.
This would all be forgotten but for Phil’s vendetta
Or without the unforced errors by the Barksdalers.
Where is the (s)Pigott guy? Guess I shouldn't be surprised when someone is (repeatedly) commenting on JJ with no knowledge or insight.
Who gives a damn about the sources? Bryant’s text messages speak for themselves. If anyone at all associated with the Prevacus deal is held accountable, Bryant certainly should be too. If he’s not held to account, no one should be. The fact that he’s been given a pass is a travesty of justice.
Leaker(s), plural.
This is absurd
Good job putting this in CONTEXT, Kingfish!
I will never vote Democrat. I don't care how much you mewl.
Exactly! And that’s how we get to where we are now!
I don't understand why he cares who gave the texts to the paper. It's not going to help him, they just proved he was a crook. Nobody slandered him they just reported the facts.
Deputy Pheel is sure crying wolf.
Sounds like someone is unhappy about being caught. Extremely unlikely there would ever be charges in RINO world.
Uhhhh. Department of collaborators? Collaborating with who?
Name History
Name Name Type
Department of Collaborators, LLC Legal
Business Information
Business Type: Limited Liability Company
Business ID: 1373385
Status: Dissolved
Effective Date: 01/11/2023
State of Incorporation: Mississippi
Principal Office Address: NO PRINCIPAL OFFICE ADDRESS FOUND
Registered Agent
Name
darra woolman
Officers & Directors
Name Title
darra woolman
Manager
9:57, I think actual malice has to do which knowledge of the falsity of statements that were published.
"... with whom?"
Government corruption is the problem, not that the people found out about it. Only a sleezebag (like Bryant) would think otherwise. So glad this guy isn’t in office anymore.
Poor Anna. Her nightmare continues. She and her biased, click-bait minders pissed off the wrong people.
And we would never know these things were going on had it not been for good investigative reporting. That’s why Republicans hate the press. They get mad when they get caught. Especially when it is someone they think they are smarter than and more powerful than! If it were up to Republicans we would have state run media with nothing but Fox News, Joel Osteen and Charles Stanley!
Feel is in the same category as Carlos Moore. What reputation?
Is it investigative when the materials are just handed to you?
So when will Phil be charged? It is time!!!
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