Wife's Guilty Plea Raises Question of What Conyers Knew

'No Suggestions' Lawmaker Was Involved

In the snow-covered parking lot of a McDonald's in Detroit two years ago, City Council member Monica Conyers met with a waste-management consultant who slipped her an envelope stuffed with as much as $3,000 in cash.

The under-the-table payment, made shortly after she cast the swing vote on a $1 billion city sludge deal, drove Conyers's guilty plea to a bribery charge that could send the Democratic politician to prison for up to five years. Conyers emerged for her court hearing late last week in the same building where her husband, John Conyers Jr. (D), who has served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1965, maintains an office.

Federal prosecutors in Detroit took pains to say that they had "no suggestions" that John Conyers knew of or was involved in the two-year-long bribery investigation, which has shaken a city already struggling to recover from a sex scandal that forced its mayor out of office. Monica Conyers, 44, appeared on a local television station this week to resign as the council's second in command, apologize to Detroit residents and denounce a former aide about whom, she said, her husband had warned her.

Questions about what the 80-year-old congressman may have known about his spouse's supplements to their finances continue to swirl, as do inquiries about how closely federal investigators examined him about the issues.

Through a spokesman, Conyers pointed to a statement by prosecutors that "the evidence offered no suggestions that U.S. Representative John Conyers . . . had any knowledge or role" in his wife's illegal conduct.

In connection with her guilty plea, Monica Conyers acknowledged pocketing less than $10,000 in a pair of parking-lot rendezvous in 2007. At the time, she served on the City Council and on a board that controlled the city's general retirement fund. Her former aide later told reporters that she took more in cash, jewelry and meals from a Detroit mogul and other Michigan political intermediaries. Government court filings are careful to report that she pleaded guilty to "one instance" of perceived influence peddling.

Authorities say they are continuing to root out corruption in the city extending beyond the sludge deal, and state lawmakers have asked what John Conyers knew, even after prosecutors absolved him of involvement in the arrangement with the waste company.

Steve Fishman, an attorney for Monica Conyers, said, "Congressman Conyers had nothing to do with any of the activities described in the plea agreement."

A Separate Life

Allies of John Conyers, who prizes his record of jousting with the Bush administration over its approach to civil rights and national security, say that he attends to few details outside his legislative duties and largely leads a separate life from his wife of nearly two decades. Conyers chairs the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department, but according to law enforcement officials in the city, the congressman did not "attempt to influence this investigation in any way."

"The reality on the ground is, in my 20 years, not once has anybody tried to steer me toward or against any investigation for political reasons," said Lynn Helland, the chief prosecutor in the public corruption unit in Detroit.

The office is led by acting U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg, a career lawyer who donated to the campaign of President Obama and who had expressed interest in becoming the administration's new top prosecutor in Detroit. But he is not the leading candidate, and John Conyers and the Congressional Black Caucus have thrown their weight behind another candidate, according to people in the District and in Michigan who are following the process.