Feds: Jack Johnson’s Glossy ‘Legacy’ Booklets Highlight ‘Hypocrisy And Self-Delusion’

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Before Jack Johnson left public office in late 2010 — and prior to his arrest in a massive corruption scandal — the former Prince George’s County Executive had 250,000 glossy booklets printed up with the title “A Legacy: Leadership, Service.” Taxpayers paid $226,597 to have them printed. There they are pictured above, sitting in a warehouse.

Now a copy of the booklet is “Attachment A” in a sentencing memo filed on Monday by federal prosecutors, who use Johnson’s own quotes in the booklet against him.

The opening page of the booklet, which the Washington Post reported on back in June, features this quote from Johnson:

We are only here for a short time to make a difference. The positions we hold belong to the people. You, the citizens, have given us the awesome responsibility to serve. Our time here has simply been amazing.

Johnson’s “self-serving quote,” the feds say, “correctly recognizes that his position as County Executive belonged to the residents of Prince George’s County… and that he had been given an ‘awesome responsibility to serve.’ But in his daily conduct, the Defendant perverted those public values and supplanted them with his personal greed.”

The fact that taxpayers funded the booklets is just icing on the cake, the feds say.

“The fact that the County paid $226,597 to print these 250,000 booklets merely highlights the Defendant’s hypocrisy and self-delusion,” they argued.

Here are some of TPM’s favorite highlights from the booklet:


The classy cover.


Johnson doing some gardening.


Featuring a quote from Proverbs: “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”


Touting his work for seniors.


..and children

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