FBI: Wade insists $30K he got from club operator not a bribe.

Byline: Michaela Paukner, mpaukner@wislawjournal.com

A former Milwaukee alderman who confessed to accepting $30,000 from the owner of a downtown strip club "didn't see what he was doing as illegal," according to records from the FBI.

The alderman, Willie Wade, was indicted in May on three counts of felony fraud by wire. Before his legal trouble, Wade had served as an alderman for Milwaukee's seventh district for 13 years from 2003 to 2016. He then worked as the CEO of Employ Milwaukee, a workforce-development organization from which he resigned in June.

According to court documents filed in late September, Wade took $30,000 from the operator of Silk Exotic in 2017 in exchange for a promise to persuade Alderman Khalif Rainey to vote in favor of a license allowing a new strip club to be opened in downtown Milwaukee. Wade said that, although he accepted the money, he never actually talked to Rainey about the vote.

FBI records say Wade insisted his actions amounted to running a "scam" rather than accepting a bribe because he never intended to give Rainey the money. He said he "had nothing to lose" if Rainey happened to vote in favor of the license.

The FBI learned about Wade's motives following a staged arrest in March 2018. That ruse took place during a meeting between Wade and a confidential FBI informant in the parking lot of Pita Palace on West Layton Avenue in Milwaukee. After listening in to their chat, six FBI agents pretended to arrest the informant. Wade was taken into the agents' vehicle for voluntary questioning.

Documents from the FBI report say Wade agreed to talk was asked about the $30,000 payment. After telling the agents several stories about his involvement with the money, Wade finally said he was trying to scam the strip-club operator, not take a bribe for Rainey. He said he took the money only because he wasn't an alderman anymore and that he had never accepted anything similar during his time on the Common Council. Wade said the strip-club operator...