Louisiana Voice

General Jeff Landry remains the same self-serving, opportunistic, suck-up sycophant he has been since his first run at public office.

This is the same attorney general who almost daily sends out glowing press releases designed to put him in the best possible light as he gears up for what he hopes will a run for the state’s highest office—if not in 2019 against John Bel Edwards, then sometime in short order thereafter.

By taking full advantage of his agency’s public information office which by now is sorely challenged to keep coming up with sufficient superlatives—at taxpayer cost, no less—Landry has managed to see to it that every single news release is all about him first and the attorney general’s various enforcement divisions second.

Landry, taking over from another cruel joke of attorney general foisted upon Louisiana’s electorate in 2016, has made a career of nabbing deviates who like to download kiddie porn (or at least announcing that he, apparently personally nabbed them), low-ranking civil servants with no political connections who attempt to rake money off the top of various programs, including Medicaid, and a scam artist here and there.

All that’s well and good. Those people should be arrested. But where has Landry been in cases involving the politically powerful appointees, legislators who use campaign funds to pay for personal expenses like luxury autos, payments of income taxes and even ethics fines? It’s relatively easy to bust a town clerk somewhere in north Louisiana or even a DHH employee who gets a little greedy. But there are other big-time crooks a-plenty in state government who Landry seems to be able to quietly ignore.

The Louisiana Attorney General’s office is different from its counterparts in other states, thanks to the lobbying efforts of Louisiana’s district attorneys way back in 1974 when the current State Constitution was written and subsequently adopted by voters. The District Attorneys Association, jealous of its turf, managed to overcome the objections of then-Attorney General William Gueste in ramming through the Constitutional Convention a provision that the attorney general’s office could not intervene in local investigations unless invited to do so by the local DA.

Yet, here we have Landry churning out those news releases almost daily about some major arrest of some perpetrator somewhere in the state, raising the question of how he manages to interject his office into so many of these local matters. Even in the case of low-hanging fruit like state civil servants, should he involve his office in the arrest of say, a DHH employee for stealing from Medicaid and Medicaid or the intended recipient of the Medicaid benefits decides to sue DHH, Landry has himself a sure-fire pickle called conflict of interests.

You see, under the present structure of his office, his primary job is to defend, not prosecute, state agencies. Yet, in case of such litigation, he would be in charge of overseeing the AG attorney or contract attorney who is called upon to defend DHH. That in turn raises another question: How can he investigate an agency and defend it?

And most recently, LouisianaVoice received in its email inbox a puff piece from Landry lauding the nomination of Brandon Fremin as U.S. ATTORNEY for Louisiana’s Middle District. Fremin, you see, is Criminal Director “for General Landry’s office,” the news release says, where he oversees several sections, including general prosecutions, insurance fraud “and the award-winning Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.”

“Under his watch, over 15 public officials have been arrested for public corruption charges—many of whom are currently being prosecuted by the LADOJ (Louisiana Department of Justice, as the AG’s office is officially known).”

But how many of those 15 held positions of supervisors or higher? Better yet, how many cases of supervisory sexual harassment cases has Landry investigated during his brief tenure? Several such reports have been received by LouisianaVoice in recent months and we are attempting to investigate them ourselves, despite the lack the personnel and authority that Landry has at his disposal.

And just for good measure, it would be interesting to learn why he hired an employee for his Fraud Division who herself had been convicted of FRAUD.

Calling Fremin’s nomination a “grand slam homerun,” Landry lost no time in moving the dialogue to a me, me, me theme. “Under my administration,” he trumpeted (emphasis added), “our office (did he really say “our”?) has created a strong partnership with our federal partners and we look forward to continuing this with Brandon in leadership. Brandon will continue to help make Louisiana an even better place to live, work, and raise our families. I hope he is quickly confirmed by the Senate.”

There is one thing we’d love to see occur before the “Criminal Director for General Landry’s office” departs for the Federal Building downtown. As Director of the AG’s Criminal Division, we can only assume it is he who is ostensibly conducting the investigation of that jailhouse  RAPE of a 17-year-old girl in April 2016—an investigation now moving into its 19^th month without a sign of resolution.

We’ve asked before and we’ll ask again: “General” Landry, just how long does it take to investigate a rape in the known confines space of a jail cell where the date of the assault and the identities of the victim and the assailant are all known to investigators?

Because the Union Parish district attorney sits on a governing board that runs the Union Parish Detention Center, he rightly recused himself and asked the AG’s office to conduct an investigation.

Inspector Clouseau could’ve hit a “grand slam homerun” on this one in a week. Yet that great champion of law and order, Jeff Landry, he of higher political aspirations, can’t seem to get traction after 18 months.