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The former mayor of Mississippi’s capital city pleaded guilty on Monday to bribery, wire fraud and money laundering, after saying a corruption case brought against him two years earlier was a “political prosecution”.

Chokwe Antar Lumumba was the mayor of Jackson in November 2024 when he was indicted by a federal grand jury after an FBI investigation and sting operation in which he and two other elected Democrats allegedly accepted illegal payments to secure a real estate deal.

At the time, Lumumba, who was first elected in 2017, denied impropriety and said the charges were politically motivated to harm his 2025 re-election campaign.

“To be clear, I have never accepted a bribe of any type,” he said. “As mayor, I have always acted in the best interests of the city of Jackson.”

On Monday, however, the 43-year-old Lumumba pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, wire fraud and money laundering, in federal court in Jackson.

Mississippi Today first reported Lumumba’s plea. Aaron Banks, a former city council member, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery.

They were released until a sentencing hearing in October. The pair each face up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000, though federal criminal defendants who plead guilty in advance of a trial generally do not receive the harshest punishments available.

Jody Owens, the district attorney for Mississippi’s Jackson-area Hinds county, made a similar plea a week earlier to a single federal conspiracy charge and resigned from his post on Wednesday.

The pleas averted a trial set for 13 July, meaning full details of the FBI operation that snared them may never be revealed.

Had the trial gone ahead, US assistant attorney Dave Fulcher said, prosecutors would have shown Lumumba took $50,000 in bribes in five checks disguised as campaign contributions. Owens received similar payments and cashed the checks through his bank account.

According to the Laurel, Mississippi, news channel WDAM7, the pair and another co-conspirator were flown to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, by private jet in April 2024, for a purported campaign event – and were handed the money by federal agents posing as representatives of a development company seeking to build a hotel in the state capital.

Shortly afterwards, it was alleged, Lumumba called the city’s director of development and planning, to move the date of a crucial meeting at which the hotel project was to be discussed.

Another Jackson city council member caught up in the scheme, Angelique Lee, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit bribery and resigned her seat in August 2024.

Lumumba, an attorney whose law license could be revoked as a convicted felon, did not speak with reporters as he left the Jackson courthouse on Monday with his wife, Eboni.

Attorneys for the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL), meanwhile, remained defiant despite the former mayor’s admission. They suggested Black minority elected officials were victims of “double standards” and received disproportionate scrutiny compared with non-Black counterparts.

According to Mississippi Today, attorney Jaribu Hill referred to supporters of Lumumba who were in court on Monday and said: “As you can see, the legacy has not been tarnished.

“What’s been tarnished, if anything, is the ongoing facade of justice.”

The NCBL co-chair Mawuli Davis told reporters at the courthouse that Lumumba chose to close the case in his own way – but that his guilty plea should not affect the “larger national discussion about equal administration of justice”, according to WDAM7.

“Black elected officials have too often exercised leadership under a level of scrutiny and political pressure that is neither equally applied nor equally experienced,” he said.

“The NCBL stands with Mayor Lumumba and his family as they seek to move beyond this difficult chapter.”

Lumumba’s tenure as mayor of a Democratic-run city in a Republican state was punctuated by tensions over race and crime, and infrastructure problems. That included a 2022 water crisis exacerbated by political divisions, systemic neglect and ageing pipes and equipment.

More than 150,000 Jackson residents, largely Black and lower-income, suffered months of low water pressure, a lengthy succession of outages and the closure of schools and other crucial facilities.

Lumumba, a progressive elected as the city’s youngest ever mayor in 2017 with 93% of the vote, and who pledged to make Jackson “the most radical city on the planet”, clashed frequently with state and federal government officials over a solution to the crisis. But he was not immune himself to criticism about the crisis.