Lawyers for a Dallas developer allege undercover FBI agents paid former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway more than $20,000 in bribes.
In a court filing the attorneys argue the bribe payments helped Caraway win re-election allowing him to remain in office so that the feds could use Caraway to entrap others in a corruption probe.
The new allegations come in a motion filed by attorney’s for developer Ruel Hamiltion who is accused of bribing Caraway and former City Councilwoman Caroyln Davis.
Davis and her daughter were killed in a car crash after pleading guilty in the case. Hamilton denies paying any bribes and has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
Hamilton’s attorneys said through the discovery process in the case they obtained government records showing FBI agents posing as developers routinely took Caraway to dog tracks, men’s clubs and gave him thousands of dollars of cash – some if it concealed in cigar boxes - in 2016 and 2017, years before Caraway pleaded guilty to corruption charges in another case – the scandal at Dallas County Schools.
Hamilton's attorneys allege the government's payments to Caraway show investigators knew he was corrupt but helped him get re-elected by paying him during the campaign and then used him to ensnare Hamilton.
The U.S. Attorney's office did not immediately respond to questions about those allegations.
NBC 5 Investigates
Uncover. Reveal. Expose.
In 2018 NBC 5 Investigates first revealed Dwaine Caraway’s involvement in the DCS scandal revealing he accepted what he then described as “consulting payments” from a company tied to the middle man who facilitated bribe payments to a top official at DCS. The same company also gave Caraway’s father a home loan that had not been repaid, NBC 5 Investigates discovered.
Caraway would later admit in a guilty plea that he took more than $400,000 in bribes and that some of the money was in exchange for a vote that benefited the owner of a school bus camera company with contracts at DCS – contracts that could not continue without continued approval for the camera program at Dallas City Hall. Caraway was sentenced to more than four years in federal prison in 2019.
