Louisiana Voice

QUEENS, NEW YORK —In what has become a Veterans Day tradition for him, on Tuesday Donald J. Trump laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Podiatrist.

Trump made his annual pilgrimage to pay homage to the heroic doctors who issued bogus diagnoses to ensure that their privileged patients never answered the call of duty.

In an emotional tribute, Trump thanked the fallen foot specialists who bravely risked their medical licenses so that others facing military service could be free.

Choking back tears, he said, “They gave everything so people like me could give nothing.”

–With great appreciation to The Borowitz Report

Watch this all the way through.

This is how real leadership looks and sounds

Even as the Trump administration licks its wounds over Repugnantcans’ sorry performance in Tuesday’s elections (even including several state races in bedrock red-state Mississippi), another development surfaced on Thursday that, should it become another trend, should grab the attention of even our ADHD-afflicted Pedo-POTUS.

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the ASSOCIATED PRESS trumpeted the story on Thursday that a federal jury has found Sean Charles Dunn not guilty of assaulting a federal agent.

Who is Sean Charles Dunn? Well, other than being a potential draft choice for quarterback of the hapless New Orleans Saints, he’s the former Justice Department employee who became a T-shirt resistance symbol for pelting a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent with a deadly submarine sandwich.

Well, gosh-darn and dagnabbit, ol’ Yam Teats and his comically inept attorney general Pam Bodi decided that Dunn was a menace to society – unlike those “patriots” and “tourists” who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (you remember — the ones Agent Orange pardoned). Accordingly, she had the subversive promptly arrested and brought up on charges. It had to be a major embarrassment for Bodi and jeanine Pirro, her inexperienced pick to lead the prosecution of this dangerous criminal.

Nothing like a little double standard to set the tone for this corrupt-to-its-very-core administration.

But I digress.

With a Democratic sweep in the elections earlier this week and Dunn’s acquittal (the system just keeps turning these psychopaths loose, doesn’t it?), it might behoove (as football coach L.J. “Hoss” Garrett used to say at my alma mater, Ruston High School) the Repugs to take notice. The worm may be turning at long last. The pendulum, which always swings both ways, may be swinging back to common sense and national equilibrium. The Party that abandoned Lincoln may be about to learn that democracy doesn’t much care for assholes.

Keep your eye on the ball, folks. More acquittals may well be on the horizon in the cases of LETITIA JAMES AND JAMES COMEY that will certainly temper the brash public comments of Bodi – but of course, not the brashness of Dear Leader. Some people, after all, just never learn. For the time being, however, Bodi is trying to learn time travel in order to overcome a hiccup in the persecution prosecution of her boss’s enemies.

Of course, this administration certainly has its untouchables. For instance, Bondi’s brother, BRAD BONDI represents two clients who were under federal investigation – but those charges have suspiciously been dropped by the U.S. Justice Department over which Pan Bondi reigns supreme, though she insists she had nothing to do with the dismissal of Bubba’s cases.

Should the Dems regain control of Congress, who knows what new trend might develop? Maybe a federal government that can – and will – function again. Perhaps even newfound respect from our allies and adversaries alike. Hopefully, members of Congress with spines.

So, why is beleaguered, six-term Jackson Parish Sheriff Andy Brown, along with the number-three man in his office, Donovan Shultz, the sheriff office’s chief investigator, calling on a doctor in Ruston while ostensibly on duty at 11:30 a.m. in an attempt to sell the surgeon on a costly “skin substitute” bandage made of dried placenta that costs patients as much as much as $11,000 PERSQUARE INCH?

I suppose it first must be explained that Donovan and Brown’s son, Andrew Brown, are officers, along with Andy Brown’s wife, Suzanne and Donovan’s wife, Jessica, in a limited liability corporation (LLC) called Six Point Consulting, formerly Six Point Laboratory, LLC, of 101 North 2^nd Street in West Monroe, according to most recent filings on Aug. 11, 2025.

Donovan Shultz and Andrew Brown, along with an individual named Joshua Keller of Smyrna, Georgia, are also officers in Six Point Holdings, LLC, whose address, too, was given as 101 2^nd Street, West Monroe, as recently as Oct. 23 of this year.

The companies are listed in the DATABASE for the National Provider Identifier (NPI), complete with a 10-digit identification number assigned by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to all healthcare providers

The name Six Points, by the way, has its origins from the six points on a sheriff’s badge. Nice that Brown and Donovan would borrow from their profession as law enforcement officers paid by Louisiana taxpayers for the names of their sideline jobs.

(A typical sheriff’s six-point badge)

Another LLC, Shultz & Brown Associates was listed as not in good standing for failure to file and annual report but it, too, included Sheriff Brown and his wife, and both Shultzes as officers. Its address was listed as 856 North Antioch Road in Quitman, which was also the address provided for both Shultzes.

Sheriff Brown, Shultz and one other, unidentified individual, called on a Ruston surgeon on Tuesday to hawk (unsuccessfully, it turned out) the product of a fast-growing but expensive medical procedure used to treat chronic wounds in patients, from burn victims to diabetes sufferers.

Placental-derived scaffolds are composed of extracellular matrix (ECM) that can mimic the native tissue, creating a reparative environment to promote ECM remodeling, cell migration, proliferation, and differentiation, according to a publication by the NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE.

It’s a $10 billion a year industry in 2024, a quantum leap from the $256 MILLION IN 2019. With multiple applications of the bandages being necessary to treat some wounds over a period of several seeks, full treatment could cost as much as $40,000 – all paid for by Medicare.

A NEW YORK TIMES article last April addressed doctors’ payments and discounts:

Had the surgeon in Ruston agreed to purchase the skin grafts provided by Brown and Donovan, he could have reaped ast much as 10 percent with the two Jackson Parish lawmen netting about 8 percent – not bad for a moonlight job performed during their sheriffing working hours.

A NEW YORK TIMES article last April addressed doctors’ payments and discounts when reporters Sarah Kliff and Katie Thomas wrote about how some doctors had profited from the procedure:

“Dr. Caroline Fife, a wound care doctor from Texas who often writes about industry excesses, shared on her blog last year an email she received from an undisclosed skin substitute company. The company boasted that other doctors had developed ‘healthy revenue stream’ from its bandages and that a patch smaller than a credit card ‘would generate a little over $20,000 for your practice.’

“Some companies offer doctors a “bulk discount” of up to 45 percent, according to doctor interviews and contracts reviewed by The Times. But doctors then collect a Medicare reimbursement for the full price of the product.

“Anti-kickback laws prohibit doctors from receiving financial rewards from drug companies or medical suppliers. And although Medicare does allow bulk discounts, experts said that the bandage rebates could have violated federal law because they didn’t actually require high-volume purchases. In some Legacy contracts reviewed by The Times, doctors had to buy only three products to qualify for a 40 or 45 percent discount.”

Donald Trump last March 2 was vocal in his criticism of a ruling by the Biden administration which was to have prohibited Medicare from covering the expensive bandages. That prohibition was scheduled to have gone into effect.

Six days earlier, on Feb. 24, perhaps not-so-coincidentally, EXTREMITY CARE, a company that sells the bandages to Medicare, had donated $5 million to MAGA, Inc., Trump’s super PAC. Just as the Biden rule was scheduled to go into effect in February, it was delayed until April 13 as part of a blanket regulatory freeze. Two days before that date, on April 11, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that the rule would be delayed until at least Jan. 1, 2025, thus allowing Extremity Care and other similar companies to continue charging Medicare for the product.

Now, as the new deadline draws nearer, Extremity Care, run by one Oliver Burckhardt, has kicked in another $2.5 million toward the construction of Trump’s White House $300 million ballroom.

So, again, with that deadline looming, along come Brown, Shultz and a third man, trying to cash in on the big bucks. It’s not as if Brown is strapped for cash; he pulls down more than $280,000 per year in salary and benefits and there’s no telling how much he and Donovan pull down from a towing service that Shultz runs (or did run).

So, how did we stumble onto this gem of a story? It’s just a simple case of Sheriff Brown and Donovan refusing to do their job while they pursue their dream of cashing in on the U.S. treasury via Medicare.

It seems that a mother was concerned that her son was the passenger in a vehicle driven in excess of 90 mph by another juvenile and she tried to report the incident to the Jackson Parish Sheriff’s office but met a stone wall of indifference when she mentioned the name of the driver, who just happened (again, coincidentally, I’m sure) to be the son of a school nurse who worked with fellow school nurse, Jessica Shultz, wife of the Jackson Parish deputy sheriff/chief investigator who is a business partner of Sheriff Andy Brown. Ergo, “investigation” stopped dead in its tracks.

And it’s not like Brown doesn’t have any other problems to worry about as he calls on area surgeons in an attempt to broker deals on his placenta bandages.

The state has CANCELED its contract with him to house juvenile offenders after he attempted to use metal shipping containers as jail cells and that juveniles in his care were abused; the shipping containers he intended to use for cells were PURCHASED by the Donovan Shultz’s father; an inspection of his facilities resulted in 83 VIOLATIONS in the treatment of youth in his care and to top it off, one of his deputies, Harry Woolridge, was arrested for the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl – his own daughter – in 2024.

A LouisianaVoice exclusive. Copyright LouisianaVoice, 2025

There’s a feature film called Outrage, released in 2009, that is basically an effort to out closet gays in public life. One of those identified in the film was Jim McCrery, then a U.S. Representative for the northwest part of the state, namely the Shreveport metropolitan area.

The outing of McCrery was accomplished by Act Up Shreveport, a local chapter of a nationwide organization. A principal of the Shreveport chapter was responsible for the McCrery outing

Now, another book by one of the sources in Outrage is scheduled for next year which will out another alleged gay U.S. Representative from the same congressional district: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

“I’m in the middle of outing Mike Johnson” said the author, a Louisiana Tech University graduate who wishes to remain anonymous for the time being. Of course, that anonymity will dissipate quickly when his book, which he says already has a publisher, hits the bookstores. For the time being, we’ll just call him Ray.

Ray said Johnson met his wife through her ministry when she ran a conversion therapy service and that he had relationships with at least one of her clients.

He said that his book “will detail what Johnson is doing.” He said among other things, Johnson sexually abused interns in his office and one of those subsequently “had to be institutionalized in Shreveport.”

Ray turned down The Guardian, The New York Times in favor of working with The Washington Post, he said. As a result of the McCrery story, he said “people have unfriended me on Facebook.”

“I gave The Washington Post an exclusive on the Johnson story until Jeff Bezos decided not to endorse either candidate in the 2024 presidential race,” he said. “That soured me on The Post. The reporter told me that didn’t involve him, that the non-endorsement decision was beyond his pay grade. But I still knew who he worked for, so I terminated conversations with that reporter.”

Ray, who is himself gay, said Johnson was an attorney in the private sector when he had affairs with two married men, affairs that ultimately resulted in divorces and that Johnson was known to have frequented a Shreveport gay bar, Central Station, with other men.

Ray was emphatic in saying his objections were not with Johnson’s gay proclivities but that in true hypocritical fashion, he was going to such lengths to hide the fact by over-compensating with his history of championing anti-LGBTQ legislation first as a private sector attorney and later as a state legislator and congressman.

Pete Buttigieg, Johnson supporters might be quick to point out, is gay and was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020 and served as President Biden’s Transportation Secretary. “The difference is Buttigieg never attempted to conceal the fact that he is gay,” Ray pointed out.

Likewise, former Massachusetts U.S. Rep. Barney Frank was openly gay. A leading Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, he was a leading co-sponsor of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act which enacted sweeping reforms following the 2008 Wall Street collapse and ensuing Great Recession.

Johnson served as a litigator and spokesman for Alliance Defense Fund (later Alliance Defending Freedom; ADF), a conservative Christian legal advocacy group that has consistently pursued an anti-LGBTQ rights agenda. In 2005, he also helped guide “Day of Truth,” an ADF-led action against “Day of Silence” protests targeting anti-gay bias in schools. 

Johnson, for example, while with the Kitchens Law Firm in Minden, was an attorney for state officials in the Robicheaux v Caldwell case which was a Fifth Circuit court challenge from several same-sex couples against the state’s same-sex marriage ban. Johnson also helped the state defend its ban in three individual district court cases that comprised the Fifth Circuit case.

Other anti-LGBTQ cases in which Johnson was involved included:

• 2004: Johnson represented judicial candidate John B. Wells, who ran campaign brochures touting his pro-life and pro-marriage positions and challenged the state’s code of judicial conduct, which prohibited judicial candidates from making “cases, controversies, or issues that are likely to come before the court.”
• 2013: Johnson represented Louisiana as the state attempted to bar a mother from adopting her wife’s biological son.
• 2015: Mike Johnson defended Louisiana’s ban on allowing same-sex couples to jointly file state income taxes and to register two parents on birth certificates, until the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutional right of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges.

In fact, Johnson has a decades-long anti-choice, pro-religious fundamentalist legal history besides his anti-LGBTQ cases. To learn more, go HERE.

Johnson also was at one time named dean of a non-existent law school for what was then Louisiana College (now known as Louisiana Christian University) to be located in Shreveport and to be known as the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law.

As dean of the proposed law school, Johnson embarked on a major fundraising campaign and described a big-dollar event in Houston with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, then-Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Pressler, according to an account Johnson wrote in a 2011 alumni magazine. No accounting of funds raised for the failed effort was ever given.

Pressler was an influential figure of the Southern Baptist Convention who in 2015, endorsed U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz for the Republican presidential nomination. Pressler, who also had served as a Texas state legislator and later as a district and appeals court judge, allegedly touched a young man’s penis in 2017, according to sworn testimony in a lawsuit that was settled in 2023. In that lawsuit, Pressler was acused of first having raped the victim, Gareld Duane Rollins, when Rollins was 14 and that he had continued to periodically sexually assault him for the next 24 years. He told the youth whom he taught in his Southern Baptist youth group that he was “special” and that their “relationship” was special but need to be kept secret because “no one but God would understand,” according to a 2017 lawsuit.

Ultimately, eight men came forward to accuse Pressler of sexual misconduct stretching over decades and varying from unwanted invitations to join Pressler naked in a hot tub to actual sexual assault. Pressler died in Houston in 2024.

Those who are gay and attempt to hide that fact might be putting themselves in a position of compromise or even to being blackmailed. For example, Johnson, as Speaker of the House and second in line for the presidency, appears willing to bend to any wish of Donald Trump, no matter how absurd, immoral or illegal it might be – including the apparent willingness to do whatever necessary to avoid a House vote on releasing the Epstein files. That conceivably could be because Trump may know about any secrets, sexual or otherwise, he may have and does not hesitate to threaten to reveal what he might know.

Imagine, if these accusations are borne out and if he were to become president, how a foreign adversary might use that same information.

We do know, however, that he does seem to bend over backward to appease Trump. Maryland Democratic Rep. JAMIE RASKIN recently accused Johnson on MSNBC of “surrendering” Congress to Trump, adding that the Louisiana Representative would go down as “the worst speaker in the history of our country.”

With Ray’s latest revelations, the question must be asked: by his refusal to allow a vote on the resolution to release the Epstein files, is Johnson protecting Trump or is he protecting himself from the exposure of an entirely separate sex scandal, one that could torpedo his own career?