DETROIT – The U.S. government has responded to former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's plea for a lighter sentence, denouncing his objections and naming co-conspirators which include his former chief of staff and mistress Christine Beatty.
View: Government's repsonse to Kilpatrick's objections to sentencing guidelines
Kilpatrick is scheduled to be sentenced for public corruption convictions on Thursday. He could face as many as three decades in prison and millions of dollars in restitution payments.
Story: Kilpatrick, Bobby Ferguson could get 30 years in prison
The government's response, issued on Wednesday, to the former mayor's objections to prosecutors' sentencing guidelines calls Kilpatrick "a leader of the criminal scheme."
"(Kwame Kilpatrick) was an elected and high-ranking public official, and he was also a leader of the criminal scheme, supervising and directing coconspirators in both the private sector (like Ferguson, Bernard Kilpatrick, Karl Kado, Jon Rutherford, and Emma Bell) and the public sector (like Derrick Miller, Victor Mercado, and Christine Beatty). So once again, Kilpatrick's guideline range has been properly increased to reflect his increased culpability," the response reads.
Beatty is the focus of an article in the November issue of the magazine Essence in which she discusses details of her lengthy affair with Kilpatrick, which eventually cost her a career.
Her attorney, Jeff Morganroth, said Beatty should not be named a co-conspirator in this case.
"This took us by surprise," he said. "Christine Beatty is not a co-conspirator. She was never charged in the federal case and referring to her as a co-conspirator is simply inaccurate."
Story: Christine Beatty talks Kilpatrick affair to Essence
Christine Beatty, Kwame Kilpatrick's chief of staff between 2002 and 2008, admitted to lying under oath in 2008. She spent 120 days in jail and five years on probation. She lied about her affair with Kilpatrick which later came out in a text messaging scandal.