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Disgraced former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick on Tuesday said he believes he shouldn't owe any restitution to the city of Detroit, calling what he's been ordered to pay "a ridiculous number."
Appearing on Fox 2 Detroit's "Detroit Talk City," Kilpatrick said "absolutely not" when host Charlie Langton asked him if he should owe any restitution to the city after the criminal case against him.
"It's a ridiculous number," he said. "...There was no misuse of public funds, no charges or no convictions. There was no stealing of any money, ever in that case. And there was no loss to the city."
Kilpatrick was convicted of racketeering conspiracy and 23 other charges and sentenced to 28 years in federal prison in 2013 for running a criminal enterprise out of City Hall.
He was also originally ordered to pay $4,584,423 in restitution to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. That amount was later reduced by an appellate court to $1.52 million and then to $823,649 in a 2026 federal court agreement.
President Donald Trump commuted Kilpatrick's sentence in January 2021, but he was still required to pay his restitution.
In his interview with Langton on Fox 2, Kilpatrick said he's repeatedly appealed the amount he's been ordered to pay in restitution and it's been lowered until it stopped at $823,000.
"What I'm trying to tell people in the city of Detroit is that I ain't ever stole anything from nobody in my life," he said.
More recently, Oakland County Treasurer Robert Wittenberg's office and Kilpatrick's homeowners' association has slapped a forfeiture notice and lien on the former mayor's 3,874-square-foot, five-bed, four-and-a-half-bath home in Novi for unpaid taxes.
During his interview Tuesday, Kilpatrick also dismissed the idea that he "somewhere along the way he went crazy and stopped loving Detroit." He said his administration "worked so darn hard" on downtown and developing parks, along with rec centers, to pave the way for some of the success that Detroit is now having.
"I believe what you're seeing now is the fruit of the hard work that was done during the time of Coleman Young, Dennis Archer, Kwame Kilpatrick that what you're seeing out there right now," said Kilpatrick.
The former mayor also shared details about how he learned that former Mayor Mike Duggan had been elected to lead the city. Kilpatrick said he'd stopped following the news when a prisoner asked him while he was incarcerated at Fort Dix in New Jersey if he knew "Mike Doogan."
When the prisoner described Duggan as a White man who used to work for the hospital, Kilpatrick finally understood who he was talking about.
"I said 'Mike Duggan?' It blew me away... That was the first I heard. Nobody told me," Kilpatrick recalled.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Kwame Kilpatrick calls restitution amount 'ridiculous number'
