Louisiana Voice

No one is really sure who first said, “You can always tell when a politician is lying: his lips are moving,” but LouisianaVoice has come up with our own variant to that adage that while not completely original, is certainly applicable.

You can always tell when a politician is feeling the heat: He first attacks the source of his problem and then he rolls out the character witnesses to attest to his integrity.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jeff Landry, current attorney general and would-be future governor of the gret stet of Looziana.

April hasn’t been exactly kind to Landry.

Were it not for the gravity of the charges against a former top Landry aid, the attorney general’s reactions would almost be laughable.

Instead, the behavior of the state’s top lawyer has quickly evolved into a display of self-righteous indignation and reprisals that only serve to further tarnish an already beleaugured office.

And a lawsuit filed by Landry over a stray cat might have been funny had it not ended up costing taxpayers $20,000 in fines against the state. More about that later.

After word leaked out of a whistleblower complaint against then-criminal division Director Pat Magee, the Baton Rouge Advocate made a routine public records request for results of an investigation conducted by an outside law firm. Landry’s response was to file a lawsuit against the reporter who made the records request.

He lost that lawsuit, which was something of an embarrassment for Landry and his office but the records he eventually released were heavily redacted but did reveal that an internal memorandum placed the blame for Magee’s alleged harassment not on Magee, but on the whistleblower who Landry said may have been guilty of sexual harassment himself for not making his complaint sooner than he did.

On Tuesday, Landry paraded a host of WOMEN STAFFERS out at a press conference in an attempt to discredit the whistleblower, former Assistant Attorney General MATTHEW DERBES who has resigned because of what he described as retaliation by Landry. Derbes has retained an attorney. He has filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as a first step to filing a lawsuit on retaliation and employment discrimination against the attorney general’s office.

At Tuesday’s press conference, Sandra Schober, deputy director of the AG’s administrative services division, said that while Magee clearly engaged in inappropriate workplace conversations but that his actions failed to rise to the level of sexual harassment. Because Landry continues to refuse to release all the records of the investigation, Schober’s reasoning remains more than a little vague.

Landry, who has a QUESTIONABLE PAST as a deputy sheriff in St. Martin Parish is quick with the lawsuit trigger finger but REFUSED to sign onto a letter that dozens of other state attorneys general sent to the U.S. Department of Justice condemning the right-wing insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. His refusal, of course, was because he was INSTRUMENTAL in the attack.

Landry also got smacked down in another COURTROOM BATTLE against Gov. John Bel Edwards’s emergency declaration as the COVID-19 pandemic was spiking and before that, he lost a case in St. Martin Parish when he challenged actions by local and state election officials from accepting private, nonprofit funds to help them run elections during the pandemic.

 Then there is that MURKY STORY about a firm owned by Landry importing Mexican workers with the assistance of a felon who had broken federal immigration laws. Landry, of course, is quite outspoken in his opposition to illegal immigration.

Landry even went on a TWITTER RANT that was riddled with incorrect information and which generated tons of ridicule for the state’s top lawyer and which earned him the title of “the stupidest lawyer in the United States” – definitely not the kind of publicity a potential candidate for governor should want.

The latest humiliation for Landry’s office came when the Third Circuit Court of Appeal recently upheld a lower court judge who sanctioned the LSU Veterinarian Teaching Hospital for filing a FRIVOLOUS LAWSUIT against a good Samaritan who agreed to pay up to $2,000 for treatment of a stray cat but ended up paying $4,000 and then getting sued by the attorney general’s office for an additional $1,200.

And the cat died.

There’s another adage that is relevant in Landry’s case: “Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.”

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If you like stories with substance like the one below this post, please consider helping LouisianaVoice continue the kind of investigative stories we’ve featured here for the past 10 years.

We’re in the middle of our April fundraiser and I humbly ask those of you who have not been impacted by the pandemic to help support our efforts. We only do this twice a year, in April and September. We don’t have a huge budget but we do have expenses.

You can contribute by credit card by clicking on the yellow DONATE button to the right of this post or you may mail a check to LouisianaVoice, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70726. With the crippling of the postal service by the current Postmaster General, I hope your contributions will arrive by the September fundraiser.

I have a new book coming out and anyone contributing $125 or more will received a signed copy. The book is featured below and I think you’ll find it interesting. It’s a true story about a murder that occurred in New Iberia 10 years ago about which many questions remain.

(The flyer above, which I did not write, is in error: Mrs. Chastant’s father did not work with the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department; a retired State Trooper, he worked as a deputy in another parish.)

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As always, thank you for your continued support of LouisianaVoice.

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A lot of people missed the significance attached to State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson’s reelection campaign of 2019 when she attempted to disqualify her opponent. The courtroom battle between her and challenger Allen H. Borne, Jr., a New Orleans attorney, should have produced a flood of questions from the media, the state ethics board and the LOUISIANA JUDICIARY COMMISSION.

But it didn’t because a lot of people dropped the ball.

Here’s what happened.

Borne did not sign the qualifying papers for the election, sending instead his agent to do so and Carter Peterson seized on that technicality to challenge his candidacy. She sued and won at the district court level.

He appealed to the 4^th Circuit Court of Appeal and one of the members of the three-judge panel which heard the appeal was Judge Regina Bartholomew Woods. Guess who served as a co-chair of her election campaign? Why, none other than Karen Carter Peterson.

And, surprise – the appellate court upheld the civil district court in denying Borne a place on the 2019 ballot. It took a Louisiana Supreme Court ruling to overturn the two lower courts but by then, Borne was late getting to the starting gate and he never really had a chance, losing by an overwhelming percentage point margin of 79-21.

It gets better.

Dryades YMCA, thanks to the efforts of Carter Peterson, was approved for $2.8 million in PRIORITY 1 FUNDING (See page 80) last year with another $5.1 million slated for Priority 5 funding for an ambitious expansion program.

In its Non-Government Organization (NGO) REQUEST FOR FUNDING, Dryades answered “None” to the question “[Is] any elected or appointed state official or an immediate family member of such an official is an officer, director, trustee, or employee of the recipient entity who receives compensation or holds any ownership interest therein[?].

While the Dryades response was technically accurate, Kenneth Carter, who died last year, and Sidney Cates IV each served on the board of the organization in the past and current board member Darren Mire is President of BOLD, the organization which Sidney Cates V serves as Political Director.

There’s more.

Sidney Cates IV and Carter Peterson’s father, Kenneth Carter, were once partners in a firm hired by the New Orleans City Council to regulate energy companies in the city.

Moreover, Kenneth Carter was a co-founder of the Black Organization for Leadership Development (BOLD), a political organization based in Central City. Sidney Cates V is the political director of BOLD which endorsed Cates IV in past elections.

Sidney Cates IV is a former member of the Dryades YMCA board and when Nu-Lite Electrical Wholesalers FILED SUIT against Dryades YMCA and others for breach of contract in 2013, the case was assigned to – you guessed it – Sidney Cates IV.

There is no question that Judge Woods should have recused herself from hearing Borne’s appeal and Cates IV certainly should have bowed out on the Nu-Lite litigation.

She didn’t and he didn’t and that in turn illustrates in glaring terms the shortcomings of the Louisiana Judiciary Commission and the Louisiana Board of Ethics.

The purpose of all this is not to lament Borne’s loss or to consider the merits of a contract dispute but to point out the underlying political power structure in New Orleans and the Louisiana Legislature and how it may well determine who the next U.S. Representative from Louisiana’s 2^nd Congressional District will be.

The obvious influence of Sen. Peterson in obtaining an appropriation of $7.9 million for a non-governmental entity like the Dryades YMCA on which Judge Cates’s father once sat as a board member and in which capacity BOLD President Darren Mire still serves underscores the incestuous political status quo in the Crescent City.

And that’s the atmosphere heading into Saturday’s congressional election between Carter Peterson and State Sen. Troy Carter.

It’s not something the state should be proud of.

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State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson should certainly know better, so the only reasonable assumption is that she just doesn’t care.

The 5^th District state senator and former head of the Louisiana Democratic Party – and a lawyer, at that – has not only placed Tulane University’s tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in jeopardy, in the process, she has exposed herself to legal liability from a possible lawsuit from the university.

Carter Peterson is pitted against fellow State Sen. Troy Carter of the state’s 7^th District in next Saturday’s runoff election to decide who will succeed former U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond who resigned to become a senior advisor to President Joe Biden.

Besides collecting per diem and mileage payments for 20 of last year’s 24 days of the Louisiana legislative session which she did not attend, she now has plastered a post of the green Tulane University logo on a promotional ad for a two-hour phone bank to benefit her campaign. Beneath the Tulane shield were the words in white typeface on a blue background, “Tulane for KCP” with the words below that line in smaller print: “Phonebank like our city depends on it.” In the bottom right corner of the illustration is a photo of Carter Peterson.

The use of the Tulane colors and logo are an infringement on the school’s copyright of the image and also puts Tulane in a delicate position because 501(c)(3) non-profits are supposed to be non-political. The endorsement of any candidate in any political race could theoretically endanger its non-profit status, though that is not likely to happen since Tulane did not give Carter Peterson permission to use its logo.

Michael Strecker, executive director of Public Relations for Tulane, responding to an inquiry, sent the following email to LouisianaVoice:

“As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, Tulane University is prohibited by federal law from endorsing any candidate for elected office. It has not offered an endorsement to either candidate in Louisiana’s 2^nd congressional district race; nor has it given permission to either candidate to use its name, “TU” shield, wordmark or any other graphic representation of Tulane University in their campaign communications. Tulane has sent Sen. Peterson a letter underscoring this.”

Asked to make a copy of the letter available, Strecker wrote back that he was unable to do so, explaining, “This letter was addressed to Sen. Peterson and her campaign. It was not sent as an open letter.”

It’s not the first time Carter Peterson has played a little dirty in this campaign. In a recent MAILER sent to voters in the 2^nd Congressional District, she attempted to tie her opponent, Sen. Troy Carter, chairman of the Legislative Democratic Caucus, to Donald Trump – something of a reach, at best.

In that mailer, she pasted a photo of Trump next to one of Troy Carter, prompting him to angrily sputter, “There’s nothing you will find in anything I’ve ever done to support any of the foolishness that my opponent is desperately trying to spread.”

The operative word in Carter Peterson’s latest tactics would indeed appear to be “desperate.”

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LouisianaVoice is right at the halfway point of its April fundraiser but we’re still a good ways from the halfway point in meeting our financial needs.

I know times are tough right now and if you can’t afford to help, I understand. But if you are able to do so, anything you can contribute to the continuation of solid investigative journalism would be appreciated more than you could ever know.

If you can, please help us. You can contribute by credit card by clicking on the yellow DONATE button to the right of this post. If you prefer, you can pay by check. The address is LouisianaVoice, P.O. Box 922, Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727.

Remember, we are a 501(c)(3) non-profit so anything you contribute is fully tax-deductible. Also, anyone contributing $125 or more will receive a signed copy of either Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption, or Bordello on the Bayou, a novel based loosely on the story of the Baton Rouge Madam of a few years ago. Please state your preference and provide your mailing address.

As always, thank you for supporting LouisianaVoice these 10 years.

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