Edmund Ford Jr. appears back in federal court
by: Deja Davis, Tia McKenzie
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Shelby County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. appeared back in federal court Tuesday morning. Video captured by WREG shows him arriving and entering the Federal building.
This comes after Ford Jr. was charged with bribery and kickbacks concerning federal funds and six counts of attempted tax evasion. He was indicted back in February.
The 17-page indictment says that Ford Jr. is accused of using his public office to secure grant funds for three undisclosed non-profits and then “corruptly” receiving financial payments from those same three organizations.
Ford Jr. entered a not guilty plea.
While in court, his defense attorney, Michael Scholl, asked for a continuance. He also requested additional time in the case, which was granted during Ford Jr.’s last court appearance.
“Well, we should have already gone through a great deal of the items that we have. I’m hoping that we’ll have gone through the majority of everything and give the judge a good time frame as to when we’ll be ready for trial,” Scholl said.
With 80,000 items, Scholl is working on how to process the tremendous amount of information. He says he has an expert to look at the material.
“The government had turned over some great volume of discovery,” Scholl said. “We also took them a hard drive, which they gave us back about four gigabytes of discovery on that. There’s some phones that were seized, not just Mr. Ford’s phones, but some others that we’ve gotten. So we’ve got about seven, seven phones and iPads that we need to go through.”
Ford Jr. surrendered his passport and is currently out on bond. He has since been present at meetings of the Shelby County Commission.
A trial date is expected on July 21 when he is due back in Federal Court.
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