Bickers is among four people indicted

City Hall continued from A9

throughout Reed’s final full year in office and for the first half of Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ term.

Bottoms and the City Council ushered in purchasing and other reforms during her four years in office in response to the scandal.

Federal authorities dug into millions of pages of records and contracts in nearly every city department. They combed city credit card and travel spending. To date, prosecutors have won seven guilty pleas, including those of three former city officials. Bickers and three other people have been indicted.

Reed has denied any wrongdoing. Still, the scandal derailed his once-promising political career.

In October, in the heat of last year’s mayoral race, as Reed sought to return to City Hall, lawyers for the former mayor said they were informed by prosecutors that Reed was not a target.

A spokeswoman for Reed did not respond to a request for comment last week.

Ties in Atlanta run deep

When jury selection begins Wednesday in U.S. District Court in downtown Atlanta, prosecutors and Bickers’ defense team will narrow a pool of 80 North Georgia residents down to 12 jurors, plus three alternates. Opening arguments could start Thursday, and the trial is expected to last two to three weeks.

Bickers is the daughter of the Rev. Benjamin Weldon Bickers, a boyhood friend of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. After her father died, Bickers replaced him in the pulpit at Emmanuel Baptist Church in southeast Atlanta. She won a seat on the Atlanta Board of Education in the early 1990s at age 27, and she became a political consultant after a failed run for Fulton County Commission chair.

A get-out-the-vote guru, Bickers helped Reed edge Mary Norwood in a bitter 2009 mayoral runoff. Bickers parlayed that work into a job in Reed’s administration from 2010 to 2013. She now works as a chaplain for the Clayton County Sheriff ’s Office.

Prosecutors have offered glimpses at their case so far, but the Bickers trial will be the deepest look yet at the seedier sides of contracting and political influence at City Hall.

Court filings suggest prosecutors will rely upon bank and business records from about a dozen companies and even Bickers’ church.

Bickers is also accused of bribery in unsuccessful attempts to win portions of a convention center hotel project and a wastewater program management contract in Jackson, Mississippi.

The indictment says from 2010 to 2014 Bickers was in cahoots with contractors Elvin “E.R.” Mitchell Jr. and Charles P. Richards Jr., both when she was a city department head and after she resigned from the city under controversy over undisclosed income, which also is part of the indictment.

The government alleges Bickers represented Mitchell and Richards’ businesses and, in some cases, provided them sensitive contracting information. The bribes sometimes were called “up-front money,” but the contractors often paid kickbacks to Bickers after they were paid for services by the city, according to the indictment.

The indictment describes a web of companies and financial transactions used to hide the alleged bribes.

Prosecutors allege Bickers spent money from the scheme to buy a $775,000 lakefront home in Henry County, jet skis, a 1964 Cadillac Deville and an SUV. Charges also include filing false tax returns, money laundering, wire fraud and witness tampering.

‘Keep your mouth shut’

The evidence is expected to include the salacious along with alleged acts, reading like the plot of a pulp crime novel. Filings by prosecutors suggest they will introduce evidence Bickers tried to ply Jackson officials with strippers and that the defendant was involved in an effort to intimidate Mitchell.

In mid-2015, Mitchell was approached by federal authorities and told his associates he intended to cooperate.

In September of that year, Mitchell was awakened at his southwest Atlanta home before dawn to the sound of a brick crashing through his window, prosecutors have alleged.

“Shut up ER, keep your mouth shut!!!” was written on the brick, and dead rats were found around his property, a police incident report from the time shows. Prosecutors said in 2018 Bickers did not directly order her friend Shandarrick Barnes to toss the brick through Mitchell’s window, but she made it clear Mitchell’s cooperation spelled the end to a gravy train for Barnes and Bickers.

Barnes pleaded guilty in 2018 to attempting to intimidate Mitchell. Mitchell and Richards each pleaded guilty in 2017 to conspiring to pay bribes to win city contracts. The three men, who have already served their prison sentences, have agreed to testify for the government.

Prosecutors indicated in court filings last month they plan to introduce new evidence of allegations of potential witness tampering by Bickers, which involves a call to a likely witness last August. Her lawyers have said the government mischaracterized the call.

Political observers question how prosecutors intend to prove Bickers circumvented city procurement rules and who else might have played a role.

It’s unclear how far the government will go in pulling back the curtain on how business worked inside Reed’s city hall. But they’ve offered clues.

Bickers’ work for and personal history with Reed, prosecutors said in one filing, are key to understanding the scheme.

In a superseding indictment that was handed down in 2019, prosecutors alleged Bickers wielded influence at City Hall even after she left, helping Mitchell and Richards’ companies “through the bribery of at least one public official.”

“The story of her bribery of City of Atlanta officials cannot be told without explaining her relationship with Reed,” the filing said.

HYOSUB SHIN/HYOSUB.SHIN@AJC.COM Attorneys for Mitzi Bickers say the defense is confident in their client’s innocence. Prosecutors have indicated the case will rely heavily on the telling of the story of Bickers’ relationship with former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. The trial was repeatedly delayed during the pandemic.