At the Lowndes County Courthouse where he has prosecuted cases for a decade, District Attorney Scott Colom unveiled his plan to root out corruption in Washington and made the case against Cindy Hyde-Smith’s betrayal of Mississippi

District Attorney Colom’s case: Corruption Costs Mississippi. Cindy takes care of herself. You get the bill.

District Attorney Colom: “In Mississippi, no one is above the law. No one should be beneath its protection. That’s the standard I brought to this courthouse, and it’s the standard I’ll bring to Washington”

“Corruption Costs Mississippi”: Read District Attorney Colom’s full Anti-Corruption Agenda — MORE HERE

WATCH VIDEO OF DISTRICT ATTORNEY COLOM’S NEWS CONFERENCE HERE

Columbus, MS — Today, standing outside the Lowndes County Courthouse where he has served as district attorney for a decade, Scott Colom unveiled his agenda to root out corruption in Washington and made a prosecutor’s case against Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith’s role in Washington’s corruption, laying out the receipts on her self-dealing, illustrating how each one connects to a cost to Mississippians, and highlighting his own record of holding the powerful accountable regardless of party. Introduced by his mentor, Pastor and Attorney Orlando Richmond, Colom leveled a simple charge: Cindy Hyde-Smith went to Washington and started working for herself, and Mississippi pays the bill.

“Cindy Hyde-Smith went to Washington and started working for herself. She collected checks from rich people to pay for her own luxury living, and when a bill came up that would have made her explain it, she voted no. The farmers got the bill. She got the donation. I’ve spent my career as a prosecutor holding the powerful accountable, without fear or favor and no matter their party, and that’s exactly what I’ll bring to Washington,” said District Attorney Scott Colom.

In remarks to press, flanked by supporters, Colom unveiled a four-part plan to root out the corruption costing Mississippians:

• Ban stock trading and secret crypto profits: Bar members of Congress, their spouses, and their children from trading stocks or cashing in on secret crypto deals in the industries they regulate, with full divestment and real-time disclosure. And bar any public official, however powerful, from launching or promoting their own cryptocurrency, taking money from foreign or anonymous buyers, and pocketing the profits while setting the policies that make that coin worth more.
• Strengthen ethics enforcement: Back independent watchdogs with real teeth and a Senate ethics office with the power to act, so breaking the rules finally comes with consequences.
• Crack down on corruption and public fraud: Give federal investigators the resources to follow the money, protect the whistleblowers who expose wrongdoing, and root out fraud wherever it hides, from Washington to the local services Mississippians count on.
• Get big money out of politics: Work across party lines to overturn Citizens United and put voters, not the biggest checkbooks, back in charge of our elections.

Colom built the case for that plan on Hyde-Smith’s own record. She billed more than $10,000 in Las Vegas hotel stays to her campaign, funded by lobbyist and corporate money, then voted to block the transparency measure that would have required her to explain it. She has taken checks from fertilizer companies under federal investigation for price-fixing, gouging the very farmers she claims to fight for on one of their biggest expenses. She voted to block a ban on members of Congress trading the stocks they regulate. And she voted to give the crypto industry the green light without the one safeguard that would have barred the president from cashing in, as he pocketed more than $1.4 billion in crypto income in a single year. Each receipt, Colom argued, lands on a cost: farmers pay more at the co-op, families pay more at the checkout, and billionaires in New York and California got a tax handout while Mississippian’s premiums climb and rural hospitals hang on.

He grounded the case in his own record. As district attorney, Colom investigated a sheriff in his own district who was preying on a woman in his jail, brought in federal investigators, and held him accountable, even though the sheriff was a member of his own party. “That is the difference between talking and doing,” Colom added.

[Watch video of District Attorney Scott Colom’s full remarks HERE.]

Key excerpts below from District Attorney Scott Colom’s remarks:

• “I’ve been honored to be elected district attorney three times, and I’ve looked hundreds of jurors in the eyes and made the case based on the facts and the law. I’ve learned that no one is above the law: not the powerful, not the well-connected, not the folks who think the rules are for everybody but them. In this courtroom, your party does not buy you a different set of rules. And I’m running for the United States Senate, because that’s not how Washington works anymore.”
• “She collected checks from rich people to pay for her own luxury living. She billed more than $10,000 in Las Vegas hotel stays to her campaign, and when a bill came up that would have required that spending to be disclosed, she voted against it. She’s also taken money from fertilizer companies that are under investigation for price-fixing, while our farmers are struggling. The farmers got the bill. She got the donation.”
• “A female inmate came to me and told me the deputies, and the sheriff, were exploiting her. She said, ‘I don’t think you’ll do anything about it, because he’s in your same party.’ It didn’t matter to me that the sheriff was a Democrat. It didn’t matter that he had previously supported me. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and when I saw wrong, I investigated it, and I did something about it.”
• “Corruption costs Mississippi. It costs us at the pump, at the pharmacy, at the co-op, at the checkout. And it costs us something even harder to measure: the trust in government that a democracy requires. In Mississippi, no one is above the law. No one should be beneath its protection. That’s the standard I brought to this courthouse, and it’s the standard I’ll bring to Washington.”

Read the full transcript of District Attorney Colom’s remarks below:

“I’m so honored to have so many people out here, even in this rain. Hopefully it’ll hold on long enough for me to get through my speech. I appreciate everybody.

“I appreciate my mentor, Pastor Orlando Richmond, a fantastic public servant and a fantastic follower of Jesus Christ.

“It’s really powerful to be here, because I practiced law in this courthouse for 10 years. I’ve been honored to be elected district attorney three times, and I’ve stood with victims and their families and helped them through the most difficult times in their lives.

“I’ve looked hundreds of jurors in the eyes and made the case, based on the facts and the law, about what I was asking a jury to do. And I’m proud that I’ve got a 94% conviction rate, and that those jurors believed me, and believed the case I was making.

“I’ve also learned over those 10 years that no one is above the law. Not the powerful, not the well-connected, not the folks who think the rules are for everybody but them.

“Now, I didn’t learn those values in the courtroom. I learned those values at home, from my parents. My mom also had the honor of serving in this courthouse for 24 years, as a chancery court judge, where she treated people fairly, and she passed those values down to me. I also learned those values from my father, who practiced law, and still practices law, and works with both Republicans and Democrats to make our state better.

“They passed down the values to me that we have to serve people, regardless of political party, regardless of financial status; that what true leadership requires is transparency and honesty. That’s how I’ve done this job. I’ve held the powerful accountable, without fear or favor, whoever they are. In the courtroom, your party does not buy you a different set of rules.

“And I’m running for the United States Senate, because that’s not how Washington works anymore. Too many politicians are taking care of themselves, their donors, and their special interests. Everybody except the people who voted to put them in that position. Everyone except the people who need them.

“Too many of them trade stock on information that we would never have. They protect a system that pays off for them, while the cost of our groceries, our gas, our health care keeps going up and up.

“Unfortunately, our junior senator protects that system more than anybody else. She was supposed to go to Washington to look out for us. Instead, she’s working for herself. And let me tell you what I mean by that.

“During the course of this campaign, through FEC reports, we’ve learned that she billed more than $10,000 in Las Vegas hotel stays to her campaign, funded by lobbyist and corporate money. She used it to stay at luxury hotels in Las Vegas and eat at nice restaurants. At least she could have spent the money on the Gulf Coast. But no, she spent it on herself. She collected checks from rich people to pay for her own luxury living.

“And when a federal bill came up that would have required this type of spending to be disclosed, she voted against it. She didn’t want Mississippi to know how she was using corporate lobbyist money to take care of herself.

“She’s also taken money from fertilizer companies that are under investigation for price-fixing. Think about that for a second. She’s the former Secretary of Agriculture. She’s supposed to look out for Mississippi farmers. We’re at a time when Mississippi farmers are struggling, and she’s taking money from fertilizer companies that are under investigation for cheating on prices, while fertilizer costs are up at least 60%, according to Delta Farm Press. The farmers got the bill. She got the donation.

“I also want to talk about the corruption our junior senator will never talk about. At the very top of our government, we’re watching one of the most brazen abuses of public office in American history. That’s not me saying that. That’s Fox News. They called it one of the biggest grifts of all time. The Wall Street Journal called it an unseemly display of using the presidency for family profit. The president launched his own cryptocurrency. He took money from foreign and anonymous buyers we can’t even see. And he recently disclosed that in one year, he pocketed $1.4 billion from the very policies on crypto that he set. That is a pattern, people.

“Our junior senator is not in Washington to help Mississippi. She’s not on our team. She’s on their team. And she’s never denied any of this. She’s never done a town hall. She does not campaign. She barely talks to the press. She would never give Mississippi Today the chance to interview her, to answer a question. She would never do it. All she does is send them statements. That’s because she knows she can’t answer for any of this corruption. And she’s worried that a neighbor might come up and ask her, where in the world have you been, and what have you done for Mississippi?

“But to be clear, it’s not just what she does for herself, and the corruption. It’s the corruption she’s allowed in D.C., and that also costs Mississippi. Let’s talk about health care, just real quick. Our Republican insurance commissioner, and I emphasize Republican, recently said that 53% of the people who get insurance on the Affordable Care Act have now dropped off, because federal support went away. And the reason that support went away is because our junior senator voted for it to go away. Our Republican insurance commissioner estimated that we currently have 400,000 Mississippians who don’t have health insurance. And that’s before we get the Medicaid cuts next year, which are going to be the largest in America’s history. One in five Mississippians is covered by Medicaid, including half our children, and half our births are covered by Medicaid, and our junior senator voted to take that away from the people who need it most. And she did it so that people who live in New York and California could get a tax break. She cut our health care so they could get a tax break.

“Now, as I’ve campaigned all across this state and talked about this corruption, too many people question whether all of our politics are corrupt, whether they can trust anybody. Well, here’s my answer to that. As I said at the beginning, my parents taught me certain values. And one of those values is that you look out for the least of these.

“So when I was district attorney, a female inmate came to me and told me that some of the jailers, deputies, and the sheriff were having sex with her. They were exploiting her. And she told me, ‘Listen, I don’t think you’ll do anything about it, because he’s in your same party, and because you’re here to protect the powerful, not look out for the powerless.’ I said, ‘Listen, ma’am, I will investigate it, like I investigate every case.’ And my office led an investigation, with the help of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. We were able to prove that not only were deputies having sex with her, but that the sheriff was too. We worked with federal partners to get that case indicted. It didn’t matter to me that the sheriff was a Democrat. It didn’t matter that the sheriff had previously supported me. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and when I saw wrong, I investigated it, and I did something about it. That’s the type of leader I am, because my parents raised me to be that way.

“So if you look at my track record, I’m not just here to point at the problem. I have the courage and the values to do something about it. And I also have a plan.

“First, if you write the rules, you should not get rich off them. I will ban members of Congress, their spouses, and their children from cashing in on stocks and secret deals in the industries they’re supposed to regulate, whether it’s Wall Street or the new cryptocurrency the president is using. Full divestment, real-time disclosure, so we can actually see who our senators are supposed to be protecting and what they’re actually doing. When the Senate had a chance to ban members and their spouses from trading individual stock, our junior senator voted to block it. I will fight to pass it.

“Second, ethics rules only matter if you have somebody there to enforce them, just like laws only matter if you have a DA ready to enforce them. I will fight for independent watchdogs with real teeth, tougher penalties for those who sell out the public, and a Senate ethics office that can actually act. Our junior senator, again, voted to block tougher disclosure of secret campaign money. That’s proof of what happens, and why she does it. A rule with no consequence is just a suggestion, and Washington has run on suggestions for far too long.

“Third, corruption should be investigated whether it hides in Washington or at the county courthouse. I will give federal investigators the resources to follow the money. I will protect the whistleblowers brave enough to expose wrongdoing. And I will crack down on the fraud that drains programs in Mississippi, whether it’s health care, disaster relief, or disability. Let me say plainly what should not have to be said: a senator has no business taking money from companies under investigation for cheating Mississippi.

“We have to get big money out of politics. We’ve got to do it, y’all. And I’ll work with anybody, Republican, Democrat, independent, to overturn Citizens United and the Supreme Court cases that have made money too much of a factor in who gets elected. It’s allowed people like our junior senator to hide, to vote against our interests, and never have to account for any of it, because she just relies on big corporate donors to come in and bail her out with big money.

“That’s the plan. Ban self-dealing. Enforce the rules. Prosecute the corruption. And give the government back to the people of Mississippi.

“But I want to leave you with this. Corruption costs Mississippi. It costs us at the pump, at the pharmacy. It costs the farmer at the co-op, and the family at the checkout. And it also costs us something that’s even harder to measure. It costs us the trust in government that’s required for us to truly be a democracy. We have to restore that trust by electing officials who are going to put Mississippi first, and not the corporate donors bailing them out.

“I’m running to change that, because I believe what my parents taught me: in Mississippi, no one is above the law, and no one should be beneath its protection. That’s the standard I brought to this courthouse, and it’s the standard I will bring to Washington.

“If you’re ready for a senator who answers to you, join us by texting SCOTT to 54937. Text SCOTT to 54937, or go to scottcolom.com to learn more about my plan. Let’s clean up the corruption in Washington. And this November, let’s show the country that Mississippi matters. God bless y’all, and thank y’all for being here.”

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About Scott: Scott Colom is a seventh-generation Mississippian, proud husband and father of two, and district attorney who fights every day to keep Mississippians safe. Guided by his Christian faith, Scott has dedicated his life to serving his neighbors and keeping them safe from violent criminals. Now he’s running to lower costs for families, save our Mississippi hospitals, and bring good jobs home. Scott loves his state and will always put Mississippi first, and he’ll work with anyone, Republican or Democrat, to get things done for us.