Kwame Kilpatrick wants hearing to dispute restitution: I don't owe government any money

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is doubling down on his contention that he doesn't owe any money to the federal government stemming from his public corruption conviction.

In his latest court filing on this contentious issue, Kilpatrick states that he is "formally requesting" a hearing on the matter, wants the issue moved to federal court in Georgia — where he lives — and says there has been "no accurate accounting" by the government regarding his restitution debt.

"I don't believe I owe the government any monies," Kilpatrick states in a partially handwritten Monday court filing, in which he is seeking to prevent his assets from being seized. "I believe treasury funds and other money are exempt from garnishment."

According to the federal government, Kilpatrick still owes $824,774 for crimes he was convicted of more than a decade ago, including bribery, extortion and fraud. That's significantly more than the $164,000 debt that the government said he owed in February, though the U.S. Attorney's Office said the new, higher figure is based on more recent communications with the court.

Kilpatrick's latest request to take up this restitution matter is before U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds, who has not shown him much mercy over the years: She locked him up for 28 years — one of the stiffest public corruption sentences in U.S. history — and has lambasted him multiple times for, as she sees it, living large while ignoring his debts and refusing to acknowledge responsibility for his crimes.

"(Kilpatrick) has a history of spending his money on a lavish lifestyle rather than paying off his obligations. (He) has only made a little over $5,000 in payments towards his restitution obligation in this case. Yet, as recently as 2022, (Kilpatrick) and his wife sought to raise $800,000 to purchase a residence in a gated, luxury community in Orlando, Florida," Edmunds wrote in an order last year, in which she denied Kilpatrick's request to end his supervised release early so he could travel more freely as a pastor.

Kilpatrick was freed 20 years early in 2021 after former President Donald Trump granted him an early release, concluding he had paid his debt to society. Trump, however, did not erase Kilpatrick's restitution debt, which was once pegged at close to $4.8 million and was later reduced to $1.5 million.

Much of that has been satisfied by Kilpatrick's co-defendant and longtime friend, Bobby Ferguson — though the government is trying to collect it all and has even sought to seize funds held by PayPal and the fundraising website Plumfund to satisfy the debt.

Among the issues for Kilpatrick is the government’s recent discovery of roughly $6,700 in cash that it says it found while searching for assets to pay off the ex-mayor’s debt to taxpayers. The government, which announced this discovery in March, wants to keep the money.

“Mr. Kilpatrick has received significant credit for his co-defendants’ payments, while repaying little of the tremendous loss he caused,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Nathan wrote in filing last month.According to federal prosecutors, Kilpatrick “has only individually paid $9,099.81 toward his debt,” through minimal monthly payments of $150.

In March, a federal court clerk in Detroit filed a writ of continuing garnishment to enforce the restitution judgment. It requires officials to keep and retain property that Kilpatrick has a "substantial" interest in, though Kilpatrick steadfastly maintains he owes nothing.

And his assets, he argues, are off-limits.

Moreover, he argues the government has failed to give him an accurate accounting of what part of the debt has been satisfied by Ferguson, who also was convicted of helping the mayor run a pay-to-play scheme out of City Hall by rigging bids and steering lucrative contracts his way.

"(T)here has been no accurate accounting ... of the forfeiture amount that was taken from (my) co-defendant, Bobby Ferguson," Kilpatrick states. "And therefore, there has not been an accurate figure presented for 'credits applied' to the already arbitrary restitution amount."

Ferguson was sentenced to 21 years, but also got out early, after Trump commuted the ex-mayor's sentence. Judge Edmunds granted Ferguson a compassionate release, concluding it wouldn't be fair to keep him locked up when his "more culpable" co-defendant had been freed.

However, Edmunds ruled that Ferguson is still on the hook for the $6.2 million in restitution he owes the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department for what prosecutors described as crooked contracts he won with the help of Kilpatrick. To date, Ferguson owes more than $2.6 million of that debt after payments and credit for assets seized by the federal government, according to a report by the Office of the Inspector General.

In March, Detroit's inspector general also banned Ferguson from securing any city contracts.

Ferguson and Kilpatrick were accused of running a criminal enterprise through the mayor's office by corrupting contracts, steering work to Ferguson and fostering a climate of fear in the contractor world. A main theme argued at trial was that if you wanted to do work in the city of Detroit, you had to include Ferguson or risk losing deals.

Kilpatrick's downfall began in 2008, when the Free Press published text messages that showed he lied during a police whistleblower trial when he testified that he did not have an affair with his chief of staff, Christine Beatty, and gave misleading testimony about the firing of a deputy police chief. The ex-mayor still owes $852,000 in restitution to the city of Detroit stemming from that scandal.

Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Kwame Kilpatrick wants hearing to dispute restitution