Ex-congressman William J. Jefferson Gets 13 Years

Ex-congressman Jefferson and family Photo source: Michael DeMocker / The Times-Picayune

To say it’s a sad day for us at Chocolate City is an understatement. We have always held the ex-congressman in very high esteem and regarded him as a true champion in the struggle in improving the lives of the people of Louisiana. We pray that the day will come when the cloud surrounding the former congressman would be removed.
Our regards goes out to the Jefferson family, including Dr. Andrea Jefferson, and their five daughters.

The former Louisiana Democrat Congressman William J. Jefferson, 62 year-old, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for bribery, racketeering and money laundering involving business ventures in Nigeria.

The sentencing judge, T. S. Ellis III, sentenced Jefferson in the United States District Court in Alexandria, Va.. He was found guilty of 11 of 16 counts.

Jefferson, a Harvard Law School graduate, spend 11 years in the Louisiana State Senate. He is also the first African American elected from Louisiana to Congress since Reconstruction. He lost his House seat in the 2008 election to Anh "Joseph" Cao. The 42 year-old freshman congressman is a naturalized U.S citizen born in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam.

In May 2006, agents raided Jefferson’s Congressional office, the first time the FBI had ever searched a Congressional office. During a 2005 raid on his home in Washington, D.C, federal agents found $90,000 neatly wrapped in aluminum foil in his freezer. Prosecutors said the money was bribe money from a Kentucky business interests to a high level Nigerian official.