Based on the amount of evidence in public forum....I’d take a guess that there’s some limits on what Cannon can offer and get substantial amounts of time taken off the prison sentence. Both the prosecutor and the defense guy know that. So Cannon will have to think about his best friends, and determine who he wants to rat on, and how this snowballs later on.
The public ought to prepare for at least more local guys to be named, and some type of arrest occurs within the next couple of months from evidence that Cannon hands over.
My humble guess is that the prosecutor is looking for bigger fish, and looking at some of the bigger figures in the state (republican and democrat). We might be shocked at where this goes during the summer.
I won’t be shocked about how far this goes and it is very likely there will be more arrests. Government corruption is far more common than most think and it occurs at all levels.
I applaud these cases and hope there are many more in the future because the fear of being caught is the best deterrent for the narcissistic politicians America is burdened with.
This Charlotte observer article does not take the mayor to task for his corruption. Not once. They instead imply, through second party quotes, that the FBI had some sinister motive to make the mayor look bad and wait until after the election to make a more dramatic arrest.
There was no guarantee that he would have been elected mayor. This lays bare their attitude that it was not a contested election. They act as if the position of mayor was his due and everyone knew he would be mayor "so why did the FBI wait".
Not once in this article did they even hint that there was something wrong with the mayor taking bribes and selling access to light rail development routes so speculators could scoop up prime locations. This reveals how business is done in these corrupt enclaves.
What a brighter world it would be if we did not have to drag the weight of these crooks and thieves along with us. How much of our economy goes to lining the pockets of these crooks? How much more could we do if the burden of this corruption did not sap our resources?