Our apologies to WFAA's Brett Shipp. After a lengthy run as our favorite local investigative TV journalist -- occasionally prone to hyperbole, sure, but a fantastic reporter with the proper evening-news mix of charm and obnoxiousness -- he has been displaced. That coveted spot in our heart now goes ... More >>
John Wiley Price is not going to be suspended or removed from the Dallas County Commissioner's Court until at least the end of his corruption trial, which is slated to begin in September 2015. Mike Cantrell, the county's lone Republican commissioner, presented a resolution that would have suspended ... More >>
In yesterday's Dallas Morning News, columnist Steve Blow apologized for calling me a "tinfoil hat" (nutcase) in 2008 when I reported that Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price was sabotaging a major shipping development in his own backyard while having compromising links to the powerful Perot ... More >>
You could almost forget about the indictment last week of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, put it out of your mind's eye, not even think where it will end and better spend your time thinking about trucking. It's the more compelling story. Logistics is the business of taking cargo off sh ... More >>
Arrests by federal agents this morning of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price on bribery conspiracy charges, along with charges against three associates, have set off a new round in everybody's favorite courthouse whisper game, "Who's flipped?" Multiple sources this morning say federal agen ... More >>
Reporters do not gasp, generally speaking, but there were muttered exclamations that might as well have been gasps when Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, age 64, was led into a large and formal federal courtroom this afternoon. His hands were manacled behind his back, his awkward gait in ... More >>
The big show-and-tell meeting between the U.S. Attorney's Office and Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, scheduled for today, has been postponed, according to reliable sources. We have a call in to Price's attorney, Billy Ravkind, for word on why. Ravkind had predicted previously that the ... More >>
Kathy Colvin at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas would not confirm or deny the veracity of Kevin Krause's post up now on the Morning News saying the feds have invited Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price in for "a meeting" next week. Price, whose offices and home ... More >>
When John Wiley Price took the microphone yesterday at the Dallas County commissioners' meeting, his fellow commissioners appeared appropriately remorseful during his monologue on African-American suffering throughout American history. But that doesn't mean they were paying attention. Price took t ... More >>
John Wiley Price first inserted himself into the debate over school reform in Dallas ISD when he showed up at a November board meeting to lambast Superintendent Mike Miles' heavy-handed attempts to enact change. His specific complaint then was the departure of longtime administrator Shirley Ison-New ... More >>
A new court order in the federal corruption probe into John Wiley Price tilts the case in the county commissioner's favor, maybe just a little, maybe quite a lot. We all recall that in 2011 the FBI seized $229,590 from a safe in the Dallas County Commissioner's Oak Cliff home. Today's order by fed ... More >>
On New Years Day, listeners tuning their radio dial to 730 AM were treated not to the typical mix of old-school R&B and soul but a stream of unintelligible foreign syllables. Visiting the website informed them that KKDA, which had served southern Dallas for 42 years had, abruptly and unceremoniously ... More >>
In 2007, Dallas County began a prostitution diversion plan in which people caught selling sex are often funneled into treatment programs rather than simply locked up. The idea -- a fairly progressive one -- is that prostitutes are most often victims who become trapped in a vicious circle rather than ... More >>
John Wiley Price is not a fan of DISD superintendent Mike Miles. He made that much clear when he appeared before the yesterday's board briefing to chide Miles on his first few months with the district. "My problem is, this district seems to be in terror, and this is no way to run a district," Price ... More >>
How John Wiley Price spun money he didn't have into real estate gold.
We heard last week from John Wiley Price, who responded defiantly in the feds' ongoing effort to squeeze him on their way to a corruption case. It's a hail mary, he said of investigators' effort to sieze $229,000 found in a December raid, nothing more than an effort to "fill holes" in a case he clai ... More >>
OK. Now I get why the FBI is taking so long with the investigation of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. They actually have to figure out all the stuff I can just paint as colorful drama. And they're doing it. I haven't been keeping up with my John Wiley Price homework, or I would have me ... More >>
Back in June, just after the federal government filed a lawsuit asking for the forfeiture of some $229,000 seized from the home of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, outside observers predicted that such a detailed public account of Price's allegedly criminal activities meant an indictment ... More >>
Nearly half a million dollars seized by the FBI during its investigation of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price are headed for civil forfeiture proceedings over the protestations of Price and his top aide, Dapheny Fain. Both say the thick stacks of $100 bills -- confiscated from a safe in P ... More >>
The folks over at the Morning News' City Hall blog alerted the world yesterday to County Commissioner John Wiley Price's Youtube channel, namely a video in which he calls out the "mainstream media" for running a "character assassination on our Black elected officials." He's not talking about the rep ... More >>
Pretty soon, any day now, maybe tomorrow, well, possibly in a week or so, I may join a 12-steps program in which I stand up at the beginning of every meeting and say, "Hi everybody, my name is Jim, and I can't stop talking about John Wiley Price." Not today. If you are visiting from out of town o ... More >>
The FBI dropped a bombshell in federal court today with an affidavit by Special Agent Donald Sherman as to why, exactly, law enforcement felt the need to seize more than $400,000 in cash (thick stacks of $100 bills) and other assets from Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price last year. In br ... More >>
It looks like Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, long a puppet of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, finally has hit the Price wall. Jenkins has stopped action on the appointment of Price protégé Aaron McCarthy, aka Aaron Michaels, to the county's "homeland security advisory committee," w ... More >>
Santa brings political theater fans an early Christmas present.
One month ago, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport board member, former Dallas Housing Authority chair, '07 Dallas City Council candidate, one-time chair of the City Plan Commission and longtime Friend of Unfair Park Betty Culbreath wrote on her blog that it's time for John Wiley Price to go. ... More >>
I guess if you took a pickax and a fire hose to it, you could have dug out a little bit of the truth from this morning's City Hall briefing on the inland port, but you needed to have your tall rubber boots on. Before we wade into the bullshit, please allow me to tell you what's really going ... More >>
That's the full title of the latest JWP protest being staged by the National Black United Front, not to be confused with the Judean People's Front or the Popular Front of Judea, who will return to the Pan-African Connection Bookstore across the street from Fair Park, scene of last month's overhea ... More >>
Oh, wouldn't you know I'd wind up agreeing with my opponent? You know what's wrong with me? I am just too damn much of a sweetheart, that's my problem. Too nice, too smart, too good-lookin'. I've got to drop at least one just to make things fair. So this morning I met on the field of battle ... More >>
The Lord doesn't always watch over fools.
I hate to say I told you so ... no, wait, that's a lie. I love to say I told you so. A week ago I said in column that we were about to see a lot of high opera in the John Wiley Price FBI corruption investigation. The season opens Saturday with Aida. As Unfair Park has reported, The National ... More >>
WFAA-Channel 8The video below, in which Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price explains the hard way to WFAA's Brett Shipp that his office isn't public property, has been updated; it's the piece that ran on Channel 8 last night at 10, in which you do hear Price tell Shipp, in a bizarrely cal ... More >>
Photo by Sam MertenThe J.L. Turner Legal Association is better known as the African-American bar association in Dallas, and bills itself as "the oldest and largest national association of African-American and minority attorneys, jurists, legal scholars, and law students in the world." Its leaders ... More >>
Look, I hate it when people tell me stuff and then won't tell me how they know it. I generally apply about a 50 percent discount to information like that. So I'm about to do the same thing to you: tell you a bunch of stuff I have been learning about the ongoing FBI public corruption investiga ... More >>
The county bail bond board has long let the industry take a county for a ride. You'll never guess who's at the wheel.
OK, let's get over the thing about "no one has been indicted" in the ongoing federal corruption investigation of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. It's true. No one has been indicted. But let's be real. Somebody will be. I am working on a column for next week's paper about behind ... More >>
From the handout provided at yesterday's fund-raising rally for John Wiley PriceSeveral Friends of Unfair Park have asked to read the entirety of the flier handed out yesterday at the "Justice for John" rally, so I've scanned it and put the whole thing after the jump -- where you'll also find the ... More >>
I need to correct an error and an omission. Yesterday I posted an item identifying the lawyer who defended Dallas County Judge Jim Foster from an intimidation attempt by Commissioner John Wiley Price as Ken Barr. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Ken Barr is a former mayor of Fort Worth and member of the ... More >>
...and with a little help from his charm, a crooked friend or two, some weird paperwork and his administrative assistant, he finally got it.
Photo by Brantley HargroveAt Kirkwood Temple C.M.E. Church last night, 120 or so congregants petitioned an Ecclesiastical Court on behalf of a decidedly earthly cause: that of embattledDallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, the target of a sweeping FBI probe. Matrons fanned themselves ... More >>
This weekend I have been sitting around ruminating on the last three years of reporting I have done on the Inland Port story, which now seems to an element in the FBI corruption probe of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. By the way, I happen to know the FBI has been hearing about this ... More >>
And don't believe everything you read.
If you are a regular reader of The Dallas Morning News, Dallas's only daily newspaper since 1991, and if you are following the federal corruption investigation of John Wiley Price, the county's most powerful black politician, then from here on out you need to put on your magnifying specs and ... More >>
It's the "other expenses" that caught Channel 5's attention last night.It's land! No, no, it's Kwanzaa Fest! No, silly, it's an art gallery owner at the South Side of Lamar! On the other side, some video and an IRS return we're entering into evidence as we begin Day Three of Hunh, I Wonder Why Th ... More >>
Photo by Alex ScottJohn Wiley Price at attorney Billy Ravkind's office Monday afternoonThe story of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price runs deep. The FBI's investigation of Price will carry the feds back into local ancient history, according to the documents on my desk. Before the f ... More >>
Schutze is taking in commissioners court this morning; it's part of his summer local-government internship program. I see John Wiley Price got there early -- why, there's a Channel 8 cameraman chatting him up as he walks into work 'round 5:30 in the a.m. First a ... More >>
Yesterday I'm standing out in front of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price's house by Lake Cliff, and I get a phone call from a radio producer who wonders if I can come on air and talk about "John Wiley Price's lavish lifestyle and his history of having people roughed up." I'm thinki ... More >>
Photo by Alex ScottI sent one of our interns, Alex Scott, to the law offices of on-and-off John Wiley Price attorney Billy Ravkind about two hours ago. Turns out, John Wiley Price was there -- had been all morning. Moments ago he came out and spoke. And this is what he said:The Dallas County comm ... More >>
Photo by Nick RalloToni Pippins-Poole, Dallas County's Interim Elections Administrator, earlier this afternoonWe're, what, nine whole minute away from our first look at early-voting results ... like anyone cares. I spoke with Toni Pippins-Poole, Interim Dallas County Elections Administrator, earl ... More >>
Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price is an interesting character made only more interesting by the fact that he drives around town in an SUV wrapped with images of the downtown skyline and himself. And that's saying nothing of his cornrows and bowties. Dude's ballin'. Which is why it's kind ... More >>