On Facebook Live, Tiawana Brown slams federal judge who sentenced her to prison

Former Charlotte city councilwoman Tiawana Brown has appealed her 10-month prison sentence after taking to Facebook Live to slam the federal judge who handled the final hearing in her felony COVID fraud case.

The one-page notice of appeal filed Thursday afternoon does not detail how the former District 3 representative will fight her sentence, but a live video posted shortly after her three-hour hearing in uptown Charlotte’s federal courthouse earlier this week suggests why she is escalating it.

“That judge did some bullshit in court today … this judge had it out for me,” Brown said of U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell in the video, before calling the U.S. government and FBI “so dirty.”

The winding, nearly 30-minute long video shows Brown standing in a home’s driveway while her daughters, who were sentenced on wire fraud conspiracy charges alongside her in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, blew bubbles in the background with Brown’s grandson. Brown thanked the more than 300 people who joined the livestream for their support and at one point said her family “definitely didn’t sit down for a conspiracy.”

She said she was “too damn busy during the pandemic” delivering food and driving people to doctors.

Brown and her daughters, Tijema Brown and Antoinette Rouse, were charged with felony wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracy last year after court documents detailed how they submitted fake forms to get taxpayer-funded pandemic relief loans in 2020 and 2021. Tiawana Brown spent the money wired to her nonprofit on a lavish 50th birthday party that featured a horse-drawn carriage and throne, and the family bought luxury Louis Vuitton merchandise.

She and her daughters later pleaded guilty to just the conspiracy charges, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in a plea deal said government attorneys would not oppose sentences of probation for all of them. That deal was immediately upended at the beginning of Tuesday’s hearing when Bell scolded assistant U.S. attorney Matthew Warren for “manipulating” the sentencing guidelines to put the women well within a range where probation would be acceptable.

Bell said that under wire fraud conspiracy statutes, the government should have held each woman accountable for the entirety of the more than $130,000 in stolen funds. Instead, Warren parsed out each of their cases, so each woman was only responsible for the amount they took, which was between $40,000 and $50,000.

Bell, a Trump-appointed judge, revised the sentencing guidelines himself, making prison time more likely for all the women. Attorneys for Tijema Brown, who for the first time acknowledged that she was the “driving force” behind the scheme, and Rouse successfully argued for probation. Bell said he was sure they would not try fraud again.

He had harsher words for Tiawana Brown, who was previously convicted of student loan fraud and sentenced to three years in prison in the 1990s. During that time, she gave birth to Tijema Brown, and court records show that she was sent back to prison for another year after violating conditions of her supervised release. Beauty After the Bars, the nonprofit that court documents say she used to fund her party, supports women who are in jail or have been recently released

When the COVID fraud charges were filed earlier this year, Tiawana Brown initially claimed they were a “political attack” and deliberate effort to interfere with her reelection to city council. After asserting her innocence and releasing a book, she later pleaded guilty to just the conspiracy charge alongside her daughters.

“If it was not for my daughters, I’d have took it to trial,” Tiawana Brown said in the post-sentencing video.

Rob Heroy, who represents Tiawana Brown, declined to comment on his client’s statements.

A spokesperson for Russ Ferguson’s U.S. Attorney’s Office said: “The ultimate sentencing guideline calculation is always a decision for the Court. We respect the Court’s decision and believe the sentences imposed in this case were fair. As in all our cases, we are careful to treat defendants fairly, while bringing safety and deterrence to the community and recovering taxpayer dollars.”

Brown maintained in her video that the judge should never have altered the guidelines and said “if they made a mistake, you should honor that.”

“All y’all who wanted me to go to prison, y’all got your wish,” she said, adding that “God is sending me into the federal prison so I can come out and expose what’s really going on.”

This story was originally published September 24, 2026 at 3:02 PM with the headline “On Facebook Live, Tiawana Brown slams federal judge who sentenced her to prison.”