Jay Town and Mark Crosswhite at cocktail time
A former federal prosecutor in Alabama, was on NBC Nightly News the other night to . . . well, we're not sure why he was there -- especially since NBC did not disclose that former U.S. attorney Jay Town has some soiled laundry in this closet. In fact, the news segment boiled down to this: Former federal "lawman," who was a central figure in a bribery case, comments on a former president who has been indicted twice.
Talk about enlightening television! And we are left with this question: Was NBC forced to schedule Jay Town, with his shady recent history, because the market faces a shortage of talking heads? We learn from an article at DonaldWatkins.com that other, behind-the-scenes factors drove Town's curious appearance.
A longtime Alabama attorney, entrepreneur, and civil-rights advocate, Watkins writes under the headline "Former Federal Prosecutor Who Was Corrupted by the Southern Company Now Bashes Trump":
Saturday night (6/10/23), Jay Town, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017 to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, appeared on NBC Nightly News to defend Special Counsel Jack Smith’s June 8, 2023, indictment of Trump and bash the former president.
What NBC News did not disclose to its millions of viewers were these pertinent facts:
1. Town was the U.S. Attorney who exercised his “broad discretionary authority” to steer the North Birmingham Bribery Case away from the Southern Company, its Alabama Power affiliate, and the top company executives who organized, approved, funded, and implemented the bribery scheme that sent a black state legislator and two co-defendants to prison.
2. In street language, Town “fixed” this criminal case to shield the Southern Company, its top executives, and networking partners from criminal exposure to a bribery scheme that was organized by them. The scheme funneled $360,000 in bribe money to former Alabama state representative Oliver Robinson, who led an effort to suppress the environmental protection rights of 4,000 mostly black residents/customers in three North Birmingham neighborhoods.
Why would a fixer show up on an NBC newscast as an apparent authority on matters of law and order? Watkins provides background:
3. Jay Town was the subject of a complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Professional Responsibility, in December 2019 and January 2020 by Kevin B. Forbes, chief executive officer of Consejo De Latinos Unidos (CDLU), which alleged prosecutorial misconduct on the part of Town in “fixing’ the North Birmingham Bribery Case for the benefit of the Southern Company, its Alabama Power affiliate, and top company executives.
4. CDLU submitted internal Southern Company documents and emails from 2015 unequivocally showing that not only were Alabama Power, CEO Mark A. Crosswhite, and other participants heavily involved in the criminal bribery scheme, but Crosswhite, himself, demanded the creation of the Alliance for Jobs and the Economy (AJE), the entity that laundered the $360,000 bribe to Robinson. Crosswhite did not want the bribery money to go through the Birmingham Business Alliance (BBA), where he served as chair in 2015.
5. On July 15, 2020, Jay Town resigned abruptly and in disgrace after photos surfaced publicly of Town inappropriately chugging down celebratory cocktails with Mark Crosswhite during the trial of two North Birmingham Bribery Case co-defendants.
Why did NBC give its viewers the impression Jay Town is an upstanding guy who is qualified to opine on matters of justice? That did not happen by accident, Watkins reports:
6. In November 2022, Mark Crosswhite, too, resigned in disgrace as Chairman and CEO of Alabama Power.
7. In late 2022, the Southern Company hired King & Spalding to probe widespread criminal misconduct at the giant utility and its affiliates, including the misconduct involving Town, Crosswhite, and other company executives identified in the CDLU complaint. King & Spalding was tasked with securing a deferred prosecution agreement from Joe Biden’s Department of Justice for this criminal conduct.
8. On April 5, 2023, OPR notified CDLU that the Department of Justice would take no further action on CDLU’s complaint against Jay Town. Given the massive volume of documentation establishing Jay Town's misconduct as a federal prosecutor in the North Birmingham Bribery Case, the suspicious and bizarre closeout of the OPR investigation made no sense.
9. Then, on June 10, 2023, Jay Town appeared on NBC Nightly News as a “de facto” Department of Justice spokesperson for the purpose of bashing Donald Trump in the aftermath of his June 9, 2023, indictment. NBC News presented Town as a "credible" commentator because he had been appointed to his U.S. Attorney's job by Trump in 2017. Essentially, the Department of Justice "flipped" Jay Town from a MAGA Trump loyalist to a prolific Trump basher. In exchange for the "flip," Town's criminal exposure in the North Birmingham Bribery Case went away.
10. Confidential sources inside the Southern Company, who are in a position to know, report that the rehabilitation of Jay Town’s soiled public image and his Trump-bashing media appearances are projects of the Southern Company’s Public Relations Division, which is headed by Bryan D. Anderson in Washington. The Southern Company also arranged for Town to give a June 9, 2023, Trump-bashing appearance on Yellowhammer News, an online media entity that was created and is financed by Alabama Power.
Such public-relations sleight of hand is not new for Southern Company. Writes Watkins:
As explained in two articles by National Public Radio – one published on December 19, 2022, and another on December 22, 2023, hijacking mainstream news organizations for PR purposes is a widely-used tool of the Southern Company. They have now captured NBC Nightly News for the limited purpose of bashing Donald Trump in front of millions of NBC news viewers, across all of the network’s affiliates.
The Southern Company is cleaning up Jay Town's seedy professional reputation as part of the process of earning a non-prosecution agreement from the Department of Justice for a multi-state racketeering enterprise and massive $27-billion accounting-fraud scheme that have been implemented by the Southern Company, its Alabama Power affiliates, and their top executives since 2017.
Will the Southern Company's clean-up and re-imaging of Jay Town benefit the company in its own criminal case? Probably so.
After all, the administration of criminal justice within Joe Biden's Department of Justice is always "for sale." Just ask Wells Fargo Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic Bank, the Southern Company, and, of course, Hunter Biden.
