This is an opinion column.

On occasion, I’ve had to call public officials in trouble — the kind of trouble that involves the FBI knocking on the door.

These calls are usually short.

Sometimes they hang up. Sometimes they hand you off to their lawyer. Rarely do they say much at all.

But when you call state Rep. John Rogers to ask him if he’s in trouble, the Birmingham lawmaker will talk to you for half an hour and tell you things you can’t believe he’s saying.

“I’m so clean on this one that I’m squeaky,” Rogers said.

He sounded happy to hear from me, not like he’s the target of a federal investigation. Rogers has been here before.

On Tuesday, another lawmaker, state Rep. Fred Plump agreed to plead guilty to federal charges of conspiracy and obstruction. According to prosecutors, Plump participated in a kickback scheme with Legislator No. 1 and Individual No. 1, as they’re called in the court documents.

“I’m Legislator No. 1,” Rogers told me. “That’s me. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t get any of that money.”

Since 2018, Rogers has directed nearly $400,000 out of a slush fund controlled by the Jefferson County legislative delegation to a nonprofit Plump controls. That money was supposed to go to a youth baseball league. Instead, the plea deal says, Plump gave half to a woman who worked as Rogers’ assistant. That’s Individual No. 1, who Plump was also dating outside of his marriage, according to court documents.

According to Rogers, he also used to date the same woman but that ended about four or five years ago. He says, since then, Plump has been seeing her and giving her money.

“She is a nice-looking lady. Fine as wine,” Rogers said. “Fantastically fine.”

Rogers says he didn’t know Plump had been giving her money until the feds started sniffing around. When she told him what had happened, he warned her that her life was about to be turned upside down.

“They’re going to use you for a witness. You’re going to have to testify against your lover,” Rogers says he told her recently. “I said, ‘You’re going to have to testify against your lover because they’re going to use you in front of the grand jury. They’re going to ask you everything.”

Rogers told me about his conversations with Plump, too. Plump told him that investigators had asked him to cooperate and to wear a wire.

“I said, if wearing a wire helps you, wear it,” Rogers said. He says he doesn’t have anything to hide.

According to Rogers, Individual No. 1 told him that Plump had also given the feds his phone.

“When she told me he gave them his cell phone, I said, ‘He gave them his cell phone?’” Rogers told me. “That’s the worst thing in the world. They asked for his cell phone and he just handed it over them.”

That phone should be at the bottom of a river, Rogers said.

Rogers says he did recommend Plump’s nonprofit get the money, which is handled by a delegation-appointed four-person board. But, according to Rogers, he didn’t have anything to do with it after that. If Plump gave money to someone he wasn’t supposed to, Rogers says that’s none of his concern.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Rogers said. “This ain’t my first rodeo.”

Indeed it isn’t. Rogers has been under federal scrutiny for most of his 40-year career in the Alabama Legislature.

In 1989, a federal grand jury indicted Rogers on charges that he took $5,000 from a coal miners union in exchange for support for legislation. A jury acquitted Rogers, who got to keep the money.

In 2009, a federal prosecutor said in court that Rogers avoided criminal prosecution for another ethics crime because the statute of limitations had lapsed.

And in 2010, the FBI seized computers from Rogers’ office, but nothing ever came of it.

In a 2004 interview with The Birmingham News, Rogers joked that all the attention — from the feds and from the media — had given him all his power.

“They call me the godfather,” he said then.

When I spoke with him this week, Rogers was no less confident and said he isn’t worried now. He recalled his previous brushes with the law almost fondly, laughing about things that might send other people to therapy, if not prison.

“I can remember talking to Doug Jones,” Rogers said of the former U.S. Senator who was his defense lawyer back then. “Doug Jones told me, one thing they’ve got in mind — they want to put your black ass in jail.”

Rogers said all this between guffaws.

“They aren’t going to put me in jail,” he said.

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