As he makes his first court appearance in his federal corruption case today, Rep. John Rogers says he’s ready to fight the charges and seek another term in the Alabama legislature.

Rogers, D-Birmingham, will be arraigned today at the Hugo Black Federal Courthouse in downtown Birmingham. He says he will plead not guilty to charges of obstruction of justice and obstruction of justice by bribery.

“They tried to offer me a plea and I wouldn’t even take it,” Rogers, 82, told AL.com. “I said, ‘Why would I plea to something I haven’t done?’ I told them to take the deal and go to hell with it.”

Rogers said federal prosecutors offered him a deal to avoid jail time if he resigned from the legislative seat he has held for 41 years.

Officials with the U.S. Attorney’s office declined to comment when contacted by AL.com

“I am not worried,” he told AL.com. “The truth is always going to stand tall.”

A federal grand jury in Birmingham late last month charged Rogers with obstruction of justice and obstruction of justice by bribery in a kickback scheme involving public money from the Jefferson County Community Service fund, a collection of tax dollars that local lawmakers get to dole out to local causes.

Federal prosecutors allege Rogers attempted to bribe someone to lie to federal investigators about the scheme by promising them additional public dollars.

The indictment says that twice in 2019 Rogers allocated money from the community service fund to an unnamed organization. Then, according to the indictment, Rogers’ personal assistant, Varrie Johnson Kindall, received a cut of the money by charging the organization an “administration fee” and using the money for personal expenses.

When the FBI started looking into the fraud, according to the indictment, Rogers and his assistant offered additional public funding in a bribe to keep the organization’s leader from talking to the investigators.

Johnson Kindall will also be arranged today. She is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, 11 counts of wire fraud, three counts of mail fraud, one count of money laundering, one count of obstruction of justice, one count of obstruction of justice by bribery, one count of failure to file tax return and two counts of aiding preparation of false tax return.

Rogers and Johnson Kindall were also central figures in another kickback scheme involving money from the community service fund, a case that brought down another state lawmaker, former Rep. Fred Plump.

Plump pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of obstruction of justice and resigned his seat in the legislature in late May. In a plea agreement, he admitted to receiving grants from the community service fund and kicking back part of the money.

Rogers allocated grants to Plump’s nonprofit, Piper Davis Youth Baseball League. Then, according to federal prosecutors, Plump wrote checks to Johnson Kindall, money she used for personal spending.

Rogers was not charged in that case.

While he has often referred to her as his assistant, Johnson Kindall is not a state employee. Instead, Rogers said he personally employed Johnson and paid her with his own money for assisting him with both personal and official business.

Rogers said that federal prosecutors tried to leverage his relationship with Johnson Kindall, whom he previously dated, to get him to plead guilty. He said they offered to be lenient in her case if he took the deal.

“The only somebody I’d do that for might be my momma, and she’s dead, and my momma wouldn’t let me do that,” he said.

Rogers called the case against him politically motivated and another effort to snare him following his decades in the legislature.

He likened the case to that of the Crocodile in the Disney Movie “Peter Pan.” Crocodile, which constantly makes a ticking sound from a clock it has swallowed, continues to stalk Captain Hook.

“They want me so bad they’ll concoct some stuff trying to connect to me. I don’t know why they think I’m so powerful in Montgomery. I’m not that powerful,” Rogers said. “I’m not even on a prestigious committee anymore.”

Still, Rogers said his institutional knowledge of the legislative process remains a threat to some.

“I’m not a bad guy, but I do make sure the Republicans follow the rules and regulations,” he said. “They call me the ‘Godfather’ in Montgomery for one reason: I know every rule that they ever made and every time I catch them in a rule, and I used it against them, they change the rule.”

Attorney Eric Guster, a Birmingham based attorney and national legal analyst, who is not associated with the case, called the indictment a dark cloud over Rogers.

“John Rogers is the big fish in this case, so what the feds start doing is they start indicting the bait fish, the small little minnows, for the big fish to bite,” he said.

Guster said he would not be surprised if the government offered Rogers a deal, mainly because of his advanced age.

“They don’t want to lock up an 80 plus year old man, and the feds are often in the business of making agreements to take the easy or fair road to get a case resolved,” Guster said. “Federal cases are often in trial less than three months, so it’s going to go fast, and it will be interesting to see who else comes forward with testimony against John Rogers for this case.”

Rogers said he is ready to take his case to court where he is confident he will be cleared of wrongdoing. Additionally, Rogers said he will not retire at the end of his term and will seek reelection in three years. The recent case has reinvigorated him, he said.

“If I had planned to retire, I won’t retire today,” Rogers said.