The FBI was secretly tracking former Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens nearly a year before federal prosecutors said their public corruption case began, according to FBI records and court filings attached to Owens’ recent motion to dismiss federal corruption charges.
More strikingly, those same filings show the FBI had been collecting corruption allegations about Jackson officials since at least 2017 — including claims involving Lumumba, City Councilman Kenneth Stokes and Owens’ former bodyguard. This was years before the FBI’s 2023 undercover operation that led to the federal indictments of Lumumba, Owens and former City Councilman Aaron Banks in November 2024.
The newly released court records show that by late 2022 federal agents had obtained phone-tracking authority on Lumumba, wired up a confidential informant to record him and formally added Owens as a “subject” of an FBI investigation tied to alleged bribery and contract-steering at Jackson City Hall…