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Archive for the ‘Corruption’ Category

Got a subpoena and don’t want to go to court? Get yourself elected to the legislature and ignore the judge’s invitation

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Corruption, Ethics, Exemptions, House, Senate, Judges, Lawsuits, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Senate on April 27, 2018| 2 Comments »

To some readers, this will come under the heading of extremely old news.

To others, it will be a revelation well worth the time to read if for no other reason than to remind us how those in positions to do so tend to take care of their own.

I’m talking about House Bill 1351 of the 2004 legislative session—14 years ago.

It was what insiders to the legislative process sometimes refer to as a snake because it is sneaked into the process as an apparently innocuous piece of legislation. In reality, however, it is a self-serving bill that does nothing to benefit the general population but which serves the purposes of only a small minority, a mere fraction of the population: those in control of the system.

Signed into law by Gov. Kathleen Blanco after passing both chambers unanimously (with five absences—four in the House and one in the Senate), and authored as HB 1351 by then Rep. Taylor Townsend, the bill gave sweeping powers to legislators and staff members to literally snub their collective noses at the authority of state courts.

Should you ever be subpoenaed as a witness or a defendant in a civil or criminal matter, you had best be in court clad in the proper attire, with a respectful attitude and at the appointed time lest you bring the wrath of the presiding judge down upon your spinning head. Try to ignore that subpoena or otherwise buck the system and you’re likely to be shown your new quarters in a local holding cell and with a special new nom de plume, courtesy of the occupants already there: “Fresh Meat.”

Unless you serve in the legislature or are employed by same.

In strict legalese, Act 873, which is formally referred to as R.S (for Revised Statute) 13:4163, is an “Ex parte motion for legislative continuance or extension of time, legislators or employees engaged in legislative or constitutional convention activities.”

In plain English, it’s a doctor’s excuse to skip class for extended periods of time.

With a not from appropriate authority, i.e. the clerk of the House or secretary of the Senate, a legislator or a legislative staff member, when subpoenaed for a court proceeding, may thumb his or her nose at the judge because the STATUTE gives them that authority over a court order.

It says so, right there in the second paragraph: “A member of the legislature and a legislative employee shall have peremptory grounds for continuance or extension of a criminal case, civil case, or administrative proceeding…The continuance or extension shall be sought by written motion specifically alleging these grounds.”

The statute also says the continuance (legal term for delay) is for the benefit of the legislator or legislative staff member “and may only be asserted or waived by a member or employee.” It even applies of the legislator is an attorney who enrolled as counsel of record in the court matter.

In other words, someone with important business before the court will just have to cool his heels while his attorney/legislator tends to more important matters, i.e. taking care of campaign contributors like oil and gas companies, nursing homes, pharmaceutical firms, banks and members of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) by making sure they are not overburdened with silly requirements to pay their fair share of taxes.

And you surely wouldn’t want your legislator missing out on a fine supper at Sullivan’s or Ruth’s Chris, a gala crawfish boil or some other after-hours function because he was hung up in court representing some poor nobody in a criminal case or civil lawsuit.

Boy Howdy, talk about rank having its privilege.

This exemption even extends to legislative committees and/or subcommittees in addition to legislative sessions and constitutional conventions (the last one of those, by the way, was in 1974 but hey, why take chances?).

So next time you’re required to be in court as a plaintiff, defendant, legal counsel for either side, or a jury member, just be thankful you aren’t a legislator so heavily burdened with the state’s pressing business that you would have to decline the judge’s invitation to attend.

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Jennings vies for title of Most Beautiful while Jeff Davis 8 murders go unsolved, drug dealing flourishes; Chief leaves

Posted in Auditor, Corruption, Crime, Media, Politicians on April 26, 2018| 2 Comments »

Jefferson Davis Parish and the City of Jennings have for years now been the unwanted focus of national attention because of unsolved murders of eight (at least, some say there are more) prostitutes from 2005 to 2008.

Those murders are said to have been the inspiration for the TV show TRUE DETECTIVE.

Although author ETHAN BROWN, in his book Murder in the Bayou, as well as numerous national media stories is about the eight women, some sources say the number of UNSOLVED MURDERS in the parish is higher, that the actual number is at least 13 and also includes four male victims.

And while the eight female victims who have drawn so much media scrutiny since discovery of Necole Guillory nearly a decade ago were known drug users, it’s not insignificant to note that Brown claims that each also was a police informant.

Yet, while ROLLING STONE magazine, DR. OZ and others continue to devote considerable ink and camera time to the mystery, Jennings rolls along planning for Louisiana’s Most Beautiful City competition while seemingly ignoring areas of blighted abandoned houses in the city and burgeoning drug trafficking in those abandoned homes despite repeated warnings from one of its citizens.

That citizen, Christopher Lehman, is a retired Navy veteran and a retired federal civil service employee who upon moving to Jennings, served as a community services coordinator for the Jennings Police Department but was fired after making too much noise about open narcotics transactions on his street.

His dismissal has not deterred him from photographing suspected drug deals from vehicles and abandoned houses on his street and hitting the mayor’s office with a barrage of recorded incidents he feels were also narcotics transactions.

In fact, Lehman has combined several binders of photographs, reports and other information that he turned over to the city authorities. His warnings were consistently ignored.

Lehman, it seems, knew what he was talking about. Jennings police recently arrested 10 people in a major HEROIN BUST.

The Jennings Police Department chief, Todd D’Albor, recently resigned to take a similar position as leader of the newly-formed New Iberia Police Department.

That city, of course, has its own set of problems with a sheriff under fire and having escaped conviction on federal criminal charges brought against him in connection with the mistreatment of prisoners in his jail, including the deaths of some prisoners in his custody.

The most notorious case was that of a 20-year-old black male who authorities claimed managed to obtain a gun and shoot himself in the chest—while his hands were cuffed behind him.

The sheriff’s office took over patrol of New Iberia several years ago when the police department was disbanded because of a lack of city revenue with which to fund the department. Only after residents voted approval of $500,000 to reinstate the department last year was the department resurrected.

The vote to bring back the New Iberia city police department may have been prompted in part by the city’s VIOLENT CRIME RATE which runs far ahead of the state and national averages.

It’s uncertain if the New Iberia mayor and city council examined an audit report of the City of Jennings which said that D’Albor, while heading the Jennings Police Department, used public property for his personal use, used police department personnel to run personal errands, and that he stored personal property at city facilities against city policy.

All that might cause the casual observer to question why one city with a chronic crime problem would hire a police chief from a city where eight—or 13—unsolved murders continue to pose serious questions as to what is being done to solve the murders as well as to curtail open drug deals on the streets of a city that aspires to the title of Most Beautiful.

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Former Louisiana politician Jim Brown reminds us the FBI is a deeply-flawed federal agency run by ambitious bureaucrats

Posted in Corruption, Courts, Crime, Ethics, Lawsuits, LSU, Media, Politicians, Senate on April 21, 2018| 13 Comments »

JIM BROWN, Louisiana’s erstwhile legislator, secretary of state, gubernatorial candidate, state insurance commissioner and self-described victim of an over-zealous FBI HATCHET JOB, today has a radio talk show and publishes an Internet blog as well as dabbling in the BOOK-PUBLISHING business.

On May 6, Brown will turn 78 but as a former track star at the University of North Carolina (he was the first athlete recruited by the legendary Dean Smith), he has certainly shown no signs of slowing down.

But this isn’t about Jim Brown per se. It’s about a post by Brown that reminded me just how unfair American justice can be and how badly the FBI can screw up.

Even FBI directors and agents who screw up and are eventually promoted to director of the FBI.

Agents like James Comey and former Director Robert Mueller.

In the interest of full disclosure and as an open admission that I am not an “objective news reporter” by any stretch, I want to say it pains me greatly to write anything that puts Donald Trump, whom I detest with every fiber in my being, in a favorable light—even by comparison. I will add that I purchased Comey’s book and actually started reading it. But I put it down after a few pages of self-serving fluff about what a great kid he was growing up, how he was bullied, and how he rose above it all. It just seemed to be a little too me, me, me.

I know I will receive critical comments, and though I am no fan of Hillary Clinton, I remain firmly convinced that the accident of Donald Trump (elected with a substantial minority of popular votes) is the worst tragedy to befall this nation since the Civil War. By comparison, LBJ was a benevolent father figure, Nixon a saint, George W. Bush a towering intellect, and Bill Clinton a paragon of marital fidelity.

But here’s the thing, as Brown reminds us in his POST: Comey, abetted by his boss, then-FBI Director Mueller, literally ruined the life of an LSU professor a mere 16 years ago.

It all actually started in 2001. Mueller had been appointed FBI Director in July of that year by W. In a matter of days after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the first of several envelopes containing deadly anthrax were sent to NBC News, the New York Post and the publisher of The Sun and The National Enquirer tabloids. In October, two more such envelopes were received at the Senate offices of Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. In all, 17 persons fell ill and five died from anthrax inhalation.

It didn’t take long for fingers to start pointing (incorrectly) to an obscure medical doctor named Steven Hatfill who once had worked at the Army’s elite Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), which, coincidentally, had stocks of anthrax, according to a lengthy 2010 article in THE ATLANTIC, entitled simply, “The Wrong Man.”

Hatfill immediately became the central figure in a media circus and the FBI was happy to oblige the need to find a scapegoat for the anthrax letters. He was working at Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), a large defense contractor, from 1999 to 2002, where he was involved in developing a brochure for emergency personnel on ways in which to handle anthrax hoax letters.

He wasn’t surprised, then, when the FBI wanted to interview him for what he thought was the agency’s pursuit of foreign terrorists. He assumed that the FBI was routinely interviewing all scientists who had worked at USAMRIID.

It didn’t seem to matter to the FBI that anthrax is a bacterium and Hatfill was a virologist who never handled anthrax.

Investigators raided Hatfill’s girlfriend’s townhouse, telling her, “Your boyfriend killed five people.” He was fired from SAIC with the official explanation being that he had failed to maintain a necessary security clearance (a disqualification that would eliminate about half of Trump’s White House staff).

And here’s where the local angle comes in. He thought he’d landed on his feet when LSU hired him as the associate director of its new program designed to train firefighters and other emergency personnel to respond to terrorist acts and natural disasters. The pay ($150,000) was to be the same as he’d made at SAIC.

But Justice Department officials, in their desperation to nail Hatfill, told LSU to “cease and desist” from using him on any federally-funded program. Accordingly, he was fired before his first day on the job. Then other prospective jobs fell through. Like the anthrax he was suspected of sending, he became toxic. One job fell through his fingers like so much sand when he emerged from a meeting with prospective employers only to find FBI agents videotaping them.

For two years, his friends were interrogated, his phone was tapped, surveillance cameras recorded his every move. (Comey recently said in his ABC-TV interview with George Stephanopoulos that if an FBI agent can’t put his investigation together in 18 months, he should be fired.)

The FBI brought in two bloodhounds from California whose handlers insisted the dogs could sniff the scent of the killer on the anthrax letters—never mind that sniffing the letters would have been lethal to the animals. When Hatfill petted the dogs, their handlers said the dogs responded “favorably,” proof that Hatfill was the killer.

If the FBI had shown even a fraction of investigative professionalism in the dog handlers’ backgrounds as they had in Hatfill’s, they might well have sent the handlers—and their dogs—packing. Defendants in California who had been convicted on the basis of the dogs’ behavior were later exonerated. In one case, a judge called the dog handlers “as biased as any witness that this court has ever seen.”

But Mueller was infatuated with the dog evidence, however, personally assuring Attorney General John Ashcroft that they had their man. Comey, asked if Hatfill might be another Richard Jewell (the Atlanta security guard wrongly accused of the Olympics bombing), was just as adamant, saying he was “absolutely certain” there was no mistake.

Well, as we all know by now, Hatfill was innocent.

Mueller and Comey’s certainty that he was the anthrax killer eventually cost the Justice Department nearly $6 million in a LEGAL SETTLEMENT. Refusing to attend the press conference announcing the resolution of the case, Mueller was less than contrite about ruining an innocent man’s life. Responding later to reporters’ questions, he said, “I do not apologize for any aspect of the investigation. He added that it would be erroneous “to say there were mistakes.”

But, Mr. Mueller…there were mistakes. There was incompetence. There was recklessness. Most of all, there was a total lack of concern for an innocent man’s life—all for the benefit of advancing the careers of ambitious men too caught up in their own careers to think of the impact their actions might have on another’s livelihood.

As much as I loathe Trump and all he stands for, I fervently hope that Mueller—and by extension, Comey—haven’t traveled down that same path in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

And last of all, but certainly not least, thanks to Jim Brown for reminding us of a dark chapter in LSU’s history, a chapter in which there should be everlasting shame, one that ranks right alongside that of the sorry saga Ivor Von Heerden’s firing over his criticism of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers following Hurricane Katrina (it turned out his criticisms were dead-on)—neither of which should ever be forgotten.

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Iberia Sheriff’s Office says computer hacked and records ‘unavailable,’ but subpoena might make them reappear

Posted in Corruption, Crime, Ethics, Public Records on April 20, 2018| 2 Comments »

If you are unfortunate enough to become the victim of a crime, you wouldn’t want to compound your problems by having it occur in Iberia Parish.

The Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office, it seems, has problems keeping up with its investigative records.

What’s more, there seems to be a problem maintaining a consistent explanation as to why a record is no longer available.

But then, the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office is not exactly the model you want to hold up as a model of efficiency, forthrightness, or competence.

Take the 2006 murder of Jamon Rogers, for example.

Ricardo Irvin entered a GUILTY PLEA in 2009 to the killing, that much is known.

But when a freelance writer recently made a routine request for the file on the investigation of the killing he was told:

  • The sheriff’s office’s computer was hacked last August and the records are no longer accessible;
  • If you want the record, you’ll have to get a subpoena.

Well, of course that raised the obvious question of how would a subpoena help if the records were hacked and are “no longer accessible”?

Somehow, those two explanations just don’t reconcile.

It’s similar to the old joke about the lawyer’s answer to a lawsuit that his dog bit a man walking past his office:

  • My dog doesn’t bite;
  • I keep my dog inside a fence;
  • I don’t own a dog.

But that’s nothing new for the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office.

After all, in March 2014, Victor White III was stopped by Iberia Parish deputies who said they found marijuana and cocaine on his person. He was placed in a deputy’s patrol car, his hands cuffed behind his back. But while cuff, deputies said, he somehow managed (a) to get a gun and (b) to commit suicide by shooting himself…in the chest.

Lloyd Grafton of Ruston, an expert retained by the White family, said the entry wound was more to the right side than frontal area and that the bullet exited from White’s left side. “There is no way he could have shot himself the way they (officials) described it, with his hands cuffed behind his back,” Grafton said.

Grafton isn’t your typical hired gun retained by attorneys to say whatever supports their case. He is a veteran of twenty-one years as a special agent for the Justice Department’s U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and with the U.S. Treasury as a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He has what is commonly known as street creds.

Last month, Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal quietly settled a federal lawsuit brought by White’s family. As has become a trend in civil lawsuits, terms of the settlement were sealed and White’s family was prohibited by a confidentiality clause from disclosing the settlement amount.

Word is, the settlement was paid from sheriff’s department funds and not by an insurance carrier because Ackal’s liability policy was cancelled because of either unaffordable premiums because of repeated violations of basic rights or because no insurance company wants anything to do with providing coverage for the department.

But then again, maybe the department’s policy was simply lost in that massive computer “hacking” last August.

Pursuant to the puzzling response to the freelance writer, LouisianaVoice made an identical request for the investigation records under terms of the Public Records Act of Louisiana (R.S. 44:1 et seq.).

The response this time came from someone named Steve Elledge, general counsel for the sheriff’s office:

“According to the records custodian at the Bureau of Investigations, that investigation case file cannot be located,” read the terse email from Elledge on Wednesday. “Therefore, we are unable to comply with your public records request.”

We couldn’t resist being a bit flippant over what looks from our vantage point as a deliberate effort to avoid compliance with state law:

“You’ve ‘lost’ the file on a murder investigation? Really? Your office yesterday informed another person making the same request that (a) the sheriff’s office records were ‘hacked’ and therefore unavailable and (b) if he wanted the record he would have to get a subpoena. My question is how would a subpoena help if the records were hacked and unavailable?

“When did this ‘hacking’ occur and why was nothing ever publicized about it? There were no news stories about the records being hacked.

“Convenient, to say the least. I wonder if a court order might make them reappear?”

There has been no further correspondence between LouisianaVoice and the sheriff’s office.

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State attorney Stephen Russo exchanges flurry of emails in private legal work on behalf of LDH Secretary Rebekah Gee

Posted in Computers, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, DHH, Ethics, Health Care on April 18, 2018| 10 Comments »

First and foremost, there is nothing in the job description requirements that says the Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) must—or should—be a physician.

Nor does the state receive any benefit from the secretary’s maintaining a medical license or credentials and board certifications.

So, why should the head of the state’s largest department devote so much time, effort, and manpower on attempts to secure her professional credentials outside her state job?

Dr. Rebekah Gee was appointed Secretary of LDH by Gov. John Bel Edwards in January 2016 as he came to office. Prior to that, she was employed by the LSU HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER (LSUHSC) in New Orleans where she served as an obstetrician/gynecologist and as assistant professor of health policy and management.

So, it stands to reason that any attempt by LDH Secretary Dr. Rebekah Gee to pursue negotiations with LSU to retain her medical license, credentials, and board certifications through continued part-time employment as a physician at LSUHSC would be done on her own behalf and at her personal legal expenses.

Certainly, rank-and-file state employees must adhere to strict guidelines regarding the use of state computers, email addresses and telephone numbers—not to mention the taboo of calling on state attorneys to do private legal work on state time and state equipment.

Instead, following her appointment as secretary, she apparently directed the department’s legal counsel to pursue negotiations with LSU on her behalf on state time and using his state email address and signing off on his email correspondence with LSU as the executive counsel for the department.

Included in the email thread were negotiations on Dr. Gee’s behalf for her to retain her tenure at LSU (pretty difficult, considering her status was reduced to unpaid volunteer) and for LSU to pony up the premiums to keep her medical malpractice insurance from lapsing—a pretty generous financial windfall in its own right.

And all that doesn’t even address the apparent conflict of interest in her performing work for an agency overseen by—and which receives funding from—the department which she now heads.

As they say, rank does have its privileges and the series of emails back and forth between executive counsel Stephen Russo and LSU officials appears pretty rank.

Gee’s APPOINTMENT was announced on Jan. 5, 2016, and before she could even get settled into her office, the email campaign by Russo had begun in earnest.

At 3:12 p.m. on Jan 13, Russo emailed LSUHSC Chancellor Dr. Larry Hollier to ask “if there is anything you need from us regarding Dr. Gee. My understanding is that she will not be receiving compensation for providing services at the LSU clinic. If that is the case, that is a good starting point to make sure we are well clear of any issues…”

At 5:15 p.m. that same day, Hollier responded: “Dr. Gee will receive a ‘gratis appointment’ and will not receive compensation from LSUHSC. She would like to still see patients to maintain her medical licensure; we are happy to have her see patients. Would there be any ‘conflict of interest’ or other issues since, as Sect. of DHH (since renamed LDH), she ‘oversees’ Medicaid payments to LSUHSC?”

The following day, Jan. 14, LSUHSC General Counsel Katherine Muslow emailed Russo at 1:36 p.m. to say, “In addition to the prohibitions provided in the Governmental Code of Ethics, the incompatibility provisions of (state statutes) should also be reviewed for applicability.”

She then went on to list six “incompatibility provisions” which she seemed to feel would prohibit Dr. Gee from working even as a volunteer for an agency partially funded by the department that she headed.

On Jan. 15, Russo, still on the state clock at 1:28 p.m. and still on a state computer, wrote LSUHSC General Counsel Katherine Muslow and others from his state email account to ask that “y’all email or telephone us and let is (sic) know the legal relationship today between y’all and secretary gee (sic).”

At 1:40 p.m., Dr. Hollier emailed Russo to reiterate that Dr. Gee “is our gratis faculty with no compensation.”

Two minutes later, Russo, apparently having not fully digested the content of Muslow’s list of reasons why Dr. Gee could not work for LSU (and too excited to bother with punctuation), responded to Hollier: “Super so she is not contract or anything but like any other faculty just not compensated?”

He finally got around to responding to Muslow at 6:32 p.m. that day: “Good deal. I am sending to my ethics folks. I have not been talking with the attorney general and have not sought a formal ethics opinion.”

On Jan. 19, Russo was back at it early, emailing Hollier at 8:33 a.m. to discuss the termination of the contract between LDH and LSUHSC for the Medicaid Medical DIRECTOR position, the position Dr. Gee had held at LSUHSC. “Before we date and send the contract termination,” he wrote, “the Secretary (Dr. Gee) would like for me to confirm the following:

  1. Her current LSU title;
  2. Her tenure status;
  3. The dates when she can begin clinic.”

At 9:48 a.m., Hollier responded: “She is an Associate Professor, gratis appointment. She had tenure but loses that since she is not Full Time; but whenever she returns to FT (full time), I will simply restore her Tenure. She will arrange to see patients two half-days a month, starting I believe after the special session. I am waiting for final clearance from LSU System Counsel.”

The news about Gee’s loss of tenure must’ve thrown Dr. Gee and by extension, Russo, into a tizzy. On Jan 21 at 2:54 p.m., Russo emailed Hollier: “Can yall’s (sic) lawyers look at this tenure issue again? It is obviously a little worrisome that she would be ‘losing’ tenure. Personally, your word is good as gold to me but what if you have moved to greater adventures.”

“I am happy to have it reviewed again,” answered Hollier at 3:48 p.m., “but regs say tenure only for full time employees. I will see what other options might be available.”

So, bottom line, what we have here is the secretary of a state department:

  • Working for an agency over which her department has jurisdiction;
  • Attempting to retain tenure from her old job even though state regulations clearly say an employee must be full time to earn or keep tenure;
  • Attempting to have the state pay for her medical malpractice insurance;
  • Instructing a subordinate (legal counsel Stephen Russo) perform private legal work on state time and on state equipment on behalf of her efforts to retain private part time employment.

As the late C.B. Forgotston would say, you can’t make this stuff up.

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