The former welfare agency official who brought information about corruption to then-Gov. Phil Bryant — breaking open a massive public fraud case that eventually ensnared NFL legend Brett Favre — is now one of the scandal’s biggest culprits, according to the state.
“‘Shot himself in the foot’ is a great way to phrase it,” said Logan Reeves, spokesperson for the state auditor’s office, which originally investigated the case.
State-employed attorney Jacob Black is facing allegations that he himself participated in the illegal welfare scheme, that he racially discriminated against an employee under him, and that blowing the proverbial whistle was for his own benefit.
“He was just always bragging how he was the whistleblower,” Kristie Greer-Ellis, former regional director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, said during a court deposition earlier this year, “that he was going to be the next executive director and that he was going to be the one who makes all of the changes and that nobody was to … go through anybody but directly to him.”
Greer-Ellis also alleged Black was hostile towards Black women — an allegation he denies — to the point that when Black women working for the agency needed him to address something, they would enlist a white colleague instead. This is the basis of an ongoing race discrimination lawsuit that former MDHS deputy administrator Dana Kidd is bringing against the agency.
Black did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
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