Friends, fantastic news—two water-cooler meme-type topics have intersected in a single story!
• Ex-NFL quarterback Brett Favre’s role in a Mississippi state-government scandal involving the misallocation of federal welfare funds returned to the national discourse in September when the news outlet Mississippi Today published text messages that Favre had sent to former state governor Phil Bryant. In the messages, Favre repeatedly urged Bryant to help him find public funding for a new volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi (where Favre’s daughter played the sport) and a biomedical startup which hoped to manufacture a nasal spray that would mitigate the effects of concussions. (Favre had invested in the company.)
The former football star was eventually successful in this effort, obtaining funds that Mississippi had originally been granted by the federal government under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which is ultimately intended to provide assistance to impoverished children and their parents.
Favre is known to the general public not just for his accomplishments as an athlete, but because there is strong evidence to suggest that he sent unsolicited images of his exposed genitals to a woman who worked on New York Jets TV broadcasts when Favre played for the team. This alleged incident is especially notorious because the website Deadspin went on to publish the penile images in question. (Favre, who is married, has never confirmed their authenticity.)
• Over the summer, the House of Representatives select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot held a series of public hearings, which frequently involved the presentation of interviews that committee investigators had conducted over videoconference. One witness whose testimony was obtained in such a manner was Eric Herschmann, an attorney and former adviser to President Donald Trump who, in his telling, made strenuous efforts to dissuade Trump from attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Viewers of the hearings came to know Herschmann not just for his frank and colorful descriptions of White House chaos but for his videoconference backdrop, a wall of contemporary art whose most eye-catching item was a baseball bat on which the word JUSTICE was written for reasons outlined here.
Anyhow, Axios reported Monday that Herschmann is now representing Favre in matters related to the Mississippi case. Favre, who says he did not know that the funds he was seeking were related to a federal welfare program, has not been charged with a crime, and Herschmann told Axios that “I only agreed to represent Brett Favre after I did my independent due diligence and was convinced that he did nothing wrong.”
But hey—if you think about it, this is one guy known for his bat, and one guy known (allegedly, in part) for h–[REDACTED] [REDACTED] [ed. note: This sentence has been terminated by Slate’s department of standards and practices]!!! That’s pretty funny!
