State Rep. Alberta Tinsley-Talabi is the latest state lawmaker to come under investigation.
The feds are looking at Tinsley-Talabi in connection with a bribery and kickback scandal stemming from her time as a city councilwoman and a Detroit pension fund trustee, Robert Snell of The Detroit News reports.
Snell reports that her former city council chief of staff, George Stanton, struck a plea deal with prosecutors and agreed to secretly record conversations with Tinsley-Talabi and others. Stanton is set to be sentenced Thursday.
To date, she has not been charged.
Snell writes:
Tinsley-Talabi’s nonprofit group received at least one bribe from a businessman while she sat on a Detroit pension fund, and her City Council campaign got thousands more from businessmen involved in a widespread corruption case, federal prosecutors said.
Tinsley-Talabi is the fifth sitting state lawmaker to come under a legal cloud. State Rep. Todd Courser resigned under pressure and state Rep. Cindy Gamrat was expelled in the fallout from a House sex scandal; Sen. Virgil Smith faces criminal charges for allegedly firing shots into his ex-wife’s Mercedes outside his Detroit home; and Rep. Brian Banks is the target of a lawsuit filed by a former aide alleging workplace sexual harassment.
The allegations involving Tinsley-Talabi emerged amid the sentencing Wednesday of a businessman who paid bribes to several former city officials.
