A defense attorney for City of Atlanta employee Mitzi Bickers created thunder inside the federal courtroom on late Friday, March 11, 2022, by alleging the FBI secretly paid its star witness tens of thousands of dollars per year to try to entrap city officials, including Bickers, into taking bribes.
Bickers’ attorney, Drew Findling, told U.S. District Court Judge Steve C. Jones inside the Richard B. Russell Federal Building that the FBI paid Elvin “E.R.” Mitchell $50,000 a year since 2006 with the purpose of setting up Atlanta City Hall officials. Mitchell allegedly kept his surreptitious employee status with the FBI until 2012, after Kasim Reed had taken over as Mayor of Atlanta from Shirley Franklin, Findling accuses.
Bickers was on the second day of her trial for allegedly taking millions of dollars from Mitchell, in order for her to steer lucrative contracts to Mitchell and another businessman, Charles P. Richards Jr. Mitchell is reportedly the federal prosecutors’ star witness in the first trial of corruption at Atlanta City Hall.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office, a division of the U.S. Department of Justice that is prosecuting the case against Bickers, told the judge they were stunned by the news that Mitchell was allegedly a paid employee of the FBI. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathan Kitchens said they did not have knowledge that the FBI, which is also a division within the Justice Department, had even hired Mitchell.
Mitchell first came to the attention of the feds during the mid-200o’s when he reached a settlement with Fulton County Schools for massively overbilling them, sparking a federal probe. It was then, Findling alleges, that Mitchell agreed to cooperate with the FBI.
Mitchell reportedly hired Bickers, who is pastor of Emmanuel Family Worship Center and renowned political savant, to be his public relations representative after he was allowed to seek city contracts again. The defense accuses Mitchell of never notifying Bickers that she was an employee of his contracting company. Mitchell also allegedly told someone that he owes Bickers in excess of $1.5 million in back pay.
Judge Jones is expected to make a ruling early next week about whether to admit into evidence this explosive information about Mitchell allegedly being a paid FBI informant working to entrap city officials. The jury was not present when Findling made this accusation about the DOJ’s star witness.
