Kilpatrick won't cut deal with government

DETROIT, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has no intention of making a deal with prosecutors despite new allegations, his lawyer said.

"Why would he be talking about a deal when he's protesting his innocence?" Kilpatrick lawyer James Thomas asked the Detroit Free Press. "He wants a trial in this case."

In a superseding indictment in the federal racketeering case against Kilpatrick, prosecutors alleged Wednesday he had accepted a $10,000 cash kickback in a restaurant men's room in 2007 from former aide Derrick Miller.

Milller made a deal with the government in September and is cooperating.

But, Thomas said: "Miller's credibility is going to be tested. ... We intend to bring that out at trial."

The indictment includes no new charges against Kilpatrick but fresh allegations.

Among them:

-- Kilpatrick co-defendant and longtime friend Bobby Ferguson, with assistance from Kilpatrick's police bodyguards, intimidated a city police officer in 2002 into agreeing to dismiss illegal dumping citations against Ferguson.

-- Kilpatrick nixed a plan to add a House of Blues restaurant at Ford Field for which he had pledged $10 million in city funds because the company that proposed it would not hire Kilpatrick's father, Bernard Kilpatrick, as a minority contractor.

-- Ferguson relied on his relationship with Kilpatrick in trying to pressure a company to award him 40 percent of a contract to renovate the Detroit Police Department in 2005.