Yep, that's the defense hizzoner da former hip hop mayor has left as to why he can't pay more than $6 in restitution on a $120,000 base salary + commissions.
Kwame Kilpatrick is living large because, his lawyer says, he has to.
Kilpatrick's attorney, Daniel Hajji, made the claim in an impassioned 14-page motion filed with the state Court of Appeals late Tuesday in an effort to postpone the ex-Detroit mayor's Friday probation-violation hearing in circuit court -- one that could eventually land him behind bars.
Wayne County Circuit Judge David Groner will arraign Kilpatrick for failing to pay $79,011 toward the $1 million he owes in restitution by last Friday's deadline. Kilpatrick and his lawyers say he doesn't have the money, despite his plush lifestyle in a tony Dallas suburb and $120,000-a-year sales job for Covisint, a Compuware subsidiary.
"The clientele he must establish a rapport with are likely to be the privileged and the affluent," Hajji said in the motion. "Burgers and beer at the local bar is not going to be sufficient."
I'm amazed his lawyer didn't just get up in court and say "Your Hona, The Kwamester has gots to represent, dig?
Look, when you owe 1 million dollars to the city you ripped off and helped push over the edge into the abyss, burgers and beer are too high a lifestyle. I say Ramen noodles ought to be the high point of your daily gastronomic feast in such a situation.
Kwame if he wasn't living so large and rubbing it in the prosecutor's and judges face could have gotten away with it. But spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and then claiming you can only afford $6 a month in restitution toward paying down a 1 Million dollar fine is not going to cut you any slack, and is instead an attempt to make the prosecutor and judge look like fools.
Understandably, prosecutors and judges do not like to be made to look like fools, especially, as in this case, when they're holding all the cards.
Adding to the mix is that Kwame may soon be facing even bigger problems - Federal bribery charges: Feds have evidence ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick took bribes
On the upside, Federal detention centers are far more stylish and lavish than the Wayne County Jail, probably a more privileged and affluent class of criminals to mix with there as well.
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