MDHS: Judge should ignore Brett Favre’s motion to dismiss welfare lawsuit

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - The Mississippi Department of Human Services says a judge should ignore Brett Favre’s request to be removed from a civil lawsuit revolving around the state’s largest-ever public embezzlement scandal.

In Brett Favre’s motion to dismiss, the former pro quarterback argues the Department of Human Services sued him to deflect responsibility for allowing millions of dollars of its public funds to be misspent.

MSDH’s 87-page response starts out by calling the Favre’s motion nothing more than a long press release.

Tucked away in the filing is a series of text messages never before seen by the public until just days ago.

The ones that stand out the most to State Auditor Shad White date back to 2017.

It was that year when Favre allegedly began to fear the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation would reject the grant funds that ultimately went toward building the university’s volleyball facility.

Court filings say that’s when Favre approached Nancy New about recording a few radio spots and sending whatever he was compensated to his alma mater.

When New agreed to the contract, Favre asked her, “Would this solve the brick and mortar issue?”

“For those people who have been following the case closely, they probably know that it is illegal to spend welfare money on a brick-and-mortar facility,” State Auditor Shad White said. “He was being told by someone at some point that there are concerns about this, and he and Nancy New were communicating about what to do about that.”

Roughly an hour later, the former NFL hall of famer followed up his text by asking, “Will the public perception be that I became a spokesperson for various state funded shelters, schools, homes, etc… and was compensated with state money? Or can we keep this confidential?”

“The public knew before this filing that Brett Farve knew he was getting public funds, but this filing shows that he knew the general purpose of that money,” White said.

Just three days after, court filings show Favre again asked for confidentiality, texting, “if you were to pay me is there anyway the media can find out where it came from and how much?”

“The point here is that there are now multiple text messages where he’s asking for secrecy. That wasn’t some sort of one-off thought that he had, and it’s not something that he texted and never followed up on. This was something that he mentioned repeatedly,” White said.

The latest development in this welfare scandal happened on Monday when the state subpoenaed Southern Miss for information.

The next major milestone could be the judge’s decision to grant or deny Favre’s motion to dismiss.

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