MS Today: “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.”