No one ever accused Corrine Brown of shrinking from controversy — even if the House Democrat faces a lot of other accusations these days. Indicted on 24 counts of fraud related to an alleged slush fund posing as a charity, Brown lashed out at the FBI and Department of Justice for investigating her at all. If they hadn’t been tied up on probing her finances, Brown said, they would have stopped the terrorist attack in Orlando that killed 49 people:

“These are the same agents that was not able to do a thorough investigation of [shooter Omar Mateen], and we ended up with 50 people dead,” Brown said. Mateen was shot and killed by police at the scene of the Orlando nightclub attack, bringing the total death toll to 50.

Perhaps a twelve-term Congresswoman might have missed this memo, but the FBI has separate units for counter-terrorism and public corruption. Agents might get temporarily assigned across designations to help out with a major case, but despite the number of counts in Brown’s indictment, this probe probably didn’t need a vast transfer of resources. Now, when it comes to another Democrat being investigated for potential national-security implications of mishandled classified material, perhaps a resource-drain argument could be made — but that assumes that Omar Mateen did anything overt prior to the attack that would have warranted a law-enforcement intervention. So far, little evidence of that has emerged.

For Brown’s case, it’s an idiotic dodge. Her attorney continued the idiocy:

“Perhaps had it chosen to devote its resources more thoughtfully, 50 innocent people would be alive today,” Elizabeth White said, according to First Coast News.

As it happens, the Brown defense team is engaging in a sort of idiocy shotgun approach to their public relations campaign. Brown put a statement on her website blaming her “persecution” on the color of her skin:

In a statement posted on her campaign website, U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown suggested her indictment last week on fraud-related charges is part of a larger problem with a legal system that targets black people.

“I’m not the first black elected official to be persecuted and, sad to say, I won’t be the last,” she wrote.

Ahem. In essence, Brown is accusing Loretta Lynch, the first African-American woman to serve as Attorney General and appointed by the nation’s first African-American president, of racism against black people. This is clearly a desperation tactic designed to distract from the indictment itself, which could combine for a sentence of over three hundred years and a fine of $5 million.

For good measure, Brown cast herself as a victim on the same par as those killed in the past week:

“Two black men were needlessly gunned down by police; 5 Dallas police officers were slain by a demented man, and on Friday I had to appear in federal court,” she wrote.

Er, yeah … we feel your pain as a Congresswoman who’s been in DC for almost a quarter-century. Other people lost their lives, but hey, you had to come to a federal court to answer for allegations of corruption. Poor you.