A federal jury on Friday convicted the daughter of President Obama’s former pastor of laundering thousands of dollars from a $1.25 million state grant for a Chicago-based job-training program, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Jeri L. Wright, the 48-year-old daughter of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, told the Tribune Friday as she left a Springfield, Ill., courtroom that she “definitely” plans to appeal the decision in U.S. District Court. She was found guilty of 11 counts, including money laundering, lying to federal agents and lying to a grand jury.
“I didn’t do anything,” Wright told the Tribune.
Her father, the retired senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ whose preaching became a point of contention because of its so-called “inflammatory rhetoric” during Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, was not part of the case.
“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” the Rev. Wright said in a 2003 sermon, which came under fire. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
Jeri Wright’s attorney told the court that his client was the victim of a elaborate scheme contrived by her longtime friend Regina Evans, the former Country Club Hills police chief who has pleaded guilty to corruption in the case, the Tribune states. Evans had secured the state loan for the job-training program but allegedly used it for purposes other than those she proposed.
Read more at the Chicago Tribune.