Detroit waits for restitution from Kwame Kilpatrick while he pays back Donald Trump

For those of you wondering whether Kwame Kilpatrick will ever settle his hefty restitution tab with Detroiters and the American taxpayer, I can report today that Hizzoner does repay some debts, but we have to get in line.

Kilpatrick is paying Donald Trump back first.

It's been about a decade since the former mayor of Detroit and I were in the same room — which is roughly the same amount of time that has passed since Kilpatrick last made a payment on the $1 million he agreed to remunerate Detroit. He still owes us more than $854,000 of the restitution that was part of his plea deal to settle criminal charges stemming from the 2008 text message scandal in which Kilpatrick used more than $8 million in taxpayer money to cover up his affair with his chief of staff. Hizzoner owes Uncle Sam much more, but we'll get into that a little later.

One of the reasons Kilpatrick and I were so far apart is the 28-year federal prison sentence Kilpatrick received in 2013 after he was convicted of 24 counts of public corruption ranging from racketeering to extortion to fraud. Trump cut Kilpatrick's stay in Club Fed short in 2021 on his last day in office by commuting Hizzoner's sentence, unintentionally setting the stage for our reunion last Monday.

Kilpatrick was the main attraction at an event titled "Let Us Reason Together: Our Faith, Our Values, Our Politics," at which the former Democratic wunderkind enthusiastically urged a predominantly Black audience to resist peer pressure and publicly proclaim their support for Trump.

His reasoning was classic Kilpatrick: Trump had helped him out, so he was going to help Trump out. In a compelling 38-minute extemporaneous speech, Kilpatrick told tales about how much he changed while in prison but also demonstrated that he hasn't changed as much as even he may believe.

I've said for years that Trump and Kilpatrick are white and Black versions of the same person: charismatic, compelling, energetic, engaging, egotistical, materialistic, vain, thin-skinned, utterly untethered to the truth, quick to blame others — especially the media — for their self-inflicted wounds and, yes, horny. And now they share convictions, ranging from the kind juries hand down after a trial to a belief that Trump should be returned to the White House.

But this isn't a column about how these crazy kids got together, or even an examination of Kilpatrick's unending efforts to avoid taking responsibility for his obligations while living large, though I'll get you caught up on that in a minute.

This is about America's future.

As I left Monday's event, after participating in a convivial but unanticipated photo op with Kilpatrick, I couldn't stop thinking: Trump gave Kilpatrick his freedom, but if Hizzoner helps persuade enough Black voters to abandon the Democratic Party, Kilpatrick could help give Trump the world.

Some bills are bigger than others

For almost as long as I've known Kilpatrick, he has talked about how his trials have changed him.

Not his criminal trials, because he has always maintained his innocence even after diverse juries in civil and criminal trials found him guilty of wrongdoing.

I mean the setbacks he has endured, from having an affair with his chief of staff revealed on front pages to being forced to resign as mayor as part of a plea deal, to being tried and convicted in federal court of turning Detroit city hall into the hub of a vast criminal enterprise, to receiving one of the longest federal prison sentences for public corruption in recent American history for being one of the most corrupt mayors in recent American history.

The latest change he claims is determining that Trump is the best candidate to lead the free world.

But here's what hasn't changed: Kilpatrick continues to live large while refusing to meet his obligations.

The Detroit News reported last year that he leased a $90,000 luxury SUV — opting for a foreign brand, perhaps still smarting from his experience using taxpayer dollars to lease a Lincoln Navigator while serving as mayor. Also in 2023, a company his wife registered paid $807,000 for a luxurious home in Novi. The company shares an address with the four-bedroom home where Kilpatrick lives with his family in Griffin, Georgia. The home is currently listed for sale with an asking price of $499,000. And Kilpatrick recently took a job with a nonprofit that likely pays him a six-figure salary, based on their past practice.

All of this would be none of our business, except for the aforementioned $854,000 Kilpatrick still owes Detroit and the more than $824,000 he owes Uncle Sam in restitution as part of the sentence he received for his dirty deeds in Detroit city hall. Those include soliciting bribes, extorting contractors, steering work to his friend Bobby Ferguson (who sometimes didn't even do the work he was paid for) and using a nonprofit that was supposed to improve the lives of Detroiters to instead pay for extravagances like a trip with his mistress to the Sonnenalp Resort in Vail, Colorado, spy equipment, yoga lessons and payments on a Cadillac.

Hizzoner has made payments of $150 a month on his federal tab while arguing that he doesn't owe anything, mainly because he believes Uncle Sam seized enough of Ferguson's assets to cover his obligation, too.

The only debt it appears Kilpatrick is working hard to repay is to Trump, the man who set him free.

Repaid ... with interest?

Kilpatrick tried playing coy about his presidential preference in May, appearing at a Trump rally in Freeland but saying only that he would not vote for Joe Biden. Earlier this month, before Trump visited 180 Church in Detroit, the former president's campaign announced that Hizzoner had endorsed him.

On Monday, Kilpatrick launched a charm offensive designed to encourage other Black activists to go public with their support of Trump. Lelli's Inn On The Green, a posh Farmington Hills restaurant next to a golf course, hosted the event where Oakland County Republicans, many of them white, mixed with Black conservatives. Kilpatrick touched on his departure in disgrace from Detroit, his spiritual rebirth in prison, and how he knew in his heart that Trump would set him free.

A week after it actually happened, Kilpatrick said he spoke to Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

"I said, 'Jared, why did you do this?' "

He said Kushner replied: "I really don't know."

Then Kilpatrick said Kushner told him everyone appealed to Trump — Black people, white people, Republicans, Democrats — "and the president's heart was just turned to you."

"When I got up at that moment," the former Hip Hop Mayor told his rapt audience, "I said: 'I'm going to follow you wherever you lead.' "

And so the son of a Democratic congresswoman, the former Democratic leader of the Michigan House of Representatives, the once-rising star who had even addressed the Democratic National Convention before becoming the youngest elected mayor in Detroit history, became a Trumper.

"I'm not going to take positions counter to him," Kilpatrick proclaimed, to applause.

It's logical to assume that someone would pledge their loyalty to anyone who let them out of stir 21 years early, but this is the same guy who went on Instagram in 2023 and copped to running untruthful political ads to further his ambition to be Speaker of the Michigan House back in 2001. He also has a track record of doing favors for billionaires, which is why the late Matty Moroun gave his family $50,000 after he resigned as mayor in 2008.

Nevertheless, Kilpatrick told his audience there are many reasons he supports Trump. Like Apostle Ellis Smith, the evening's co-host, Kilpatrick hit on conservative flashpoints like gender identity. He said the Democratic Party he helped lead while serving in the Michigan House of Representatives from 1997 to 2002 "doesn't exist anymore" and that he was shocked Democrats supported laws that said children don't have to talk to their parents before seeking a sex change. He said he never would have let such a law pass when he was a legislator, adding, "we have come to a transformational time."

Kilpatrick said style is another reason young Black men are turning to an old white man (Trump is 78).

"Because people like somebody to be real," he said, adding that Trump "is saying it in a way like we're in the back of the house talking."

Kilpatrick said he met with Trump and, "he's a real cool guy for sure. Real cool, real comfortable. But he's smart."

"I told him: 'In Michigan, they're going to have you in a Ku Klux Klan outfit ... because, Mr. President, it's all they have.' "

When news first broke that Kilpatrick was supporting Trump, Black commentator Roland Martin labeled it "crass personal interest politics" on his YouTube show "Unfiltered," which has 1.3 million subscribers. One of his guests, Greg Carr, a professor of Afro-American Studies at Howard University, said of Kilpatrick: "He seems to have lost his moral compass, if he ever had one at all." Another guest, Reecie Colbert, an author and satellite radio host, said she didn't blame Kilpatrick for showing Trump gratitude for commuting his sentence, but added: "don't follow his ass unless you need to get out of jail 16 years earlier."

That's the kind of reaction Kilpatrick was referring to when he said Monday that "they've been jumping on my head for a week." But he urged his audience to rise above the critics.

"Some of you have not come forward because you don't want that harassment," he said, adding, "Some of you are the best people we're looking for to talk to people."

Aeisha Reeves, of Clinton Township, said she is preparing to become more active and outspoken.

"I really loved his honesty today," she said of Kilpatrick. Even though she didn't vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, Reeves said: "I plan on voting for him this time."

Jimmy Lee Tillman II, who said he is the son of civil rights activist and longtime Democratic Chicago Alderwoman Dorothy Tillman, told me he came from Chicago to hear Kilpatrick.

"We're here on the ground and we're trying to bring the victory home for Trump. And Detroit is going to play a key role," Tillman said. "When you got a voice like Kilpatrick and a base, that's all you need."

Tillman said he believes Kilpatrick can "easily swing 4,000 votes for Donald Trump."

Even though Biden beat Trump by more than 154,000 votes in Michigan in 2020, Trump gained 5,207 more votes in Detroit than he got in 2016. If this year's presidential election is as close as the 2016 race — when Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Michigan by 10,704 votes — adding thousands of votes in Detroit could prove decisive.

And if Trump does well in Detroit, you know Kilpatrick will be the first to take credit for his performance.

As Kilpatrick told his audience Monday: "I lost in court, but I never lost an election."

Talent borrows, genius steals

Rather than debate whether Kilpatrick has truly changed, let's look at one thing that remains the same: Hizzoner's favorite anecdote.

In 2001, when he first ran for mayor, Kilpatrick often ended public appearances with two crowd pleasers: A story about Tim Green, who he said was a college teammate who played football as if his entire small town's fate depended on his success. The other was about how a trick to outsmart his rambunctious children led to a revelation.

In the latter tale, Kilpatrick comes home from a long day at work and is greeted by twin 5-year-old sons who want to wrestle with him. Exhausted, Kilpatrick sees a photo of the globe in a newspaper, has a brainstorm and tears the photo into little pieces and then tells his kids he will play with them if they can put the photo back together.

He then turns on the TV, puts his feet up and figures he's got plenty of time to relax.

Within minutes, the boys rush up to him with the photo put back together.

Astonished but proud, Kilpatrick figures his boys are geniuses and asks them how they did it. He learns that on the backside of the page with the globe was a photo of children.

In the big finish to his tale, Kilpatrick says: "The boys told me, 'Dad, when we put the children together, the whole world came together.' "

Audiences ate it up. I admit it was a powerful closer no matter how many times I heard it ... until my then-city hall reporting partner Eric Lords had his own revelation: He said Kilpatrick's story was eerily familiar with one told by legendary motivational speaker Earl Nightingale.

In his "Lead the Field" audiobook, Nightingale, who died in 1989, tells the tale of a man being pestered by his 5-year-old son as he watches TV. Nightingale said the man grabbed a newspaper and found an ad "that showed a picture of the world." The man then "tore up the page into a dozen pieces and gave them to his son."

"He said to him, 'Here, put this picture together with this cellophane tape, and show Daddy how smart you are.' He then went back to watching his football game."

In Nightingale's telling, the boy comes back "in a surprisingly short time" and his father says: “Hey, that’s amazing! How did you put that world together so quickly?”

The little boy responds: "There was a picture of a man on the other side. I just put the man together, and then the world was all together.”

On Monday, Kilpatrick told a slightly more elaborate version of the same yarn he has been spinning for at least 23 years, though in this latest incarnation Hizzoner said: "... every time I came home from the office, M.L. had wrote an article about me. I was frustrated and mad. ... I just wanted to sit down."

I'm pretty sure at least that much of the tale is true, but I offer this anecdote not to accuse Kilpatrick of plagiarism so much as to raise a question whose answer could have a profound impact on all of us:

Can a man who can't even change his story change voters' minds?

The answer, I suspect, will come in November.

M.L. Elrick is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and host of the ML's Soul of Detroit podcast. Contact him at mlelrick@freepress.com or follow him on X at @elrick, Facebook at ML Elrick and Instagram at ml_elrick.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Kwame Kilpatrick skips debt to Detroit while paying back Donald Trump