Belinda Parker Brown, at the September 19, 2024 meeting of the Louisiana State Police Commission (LSPC), after first having served attorney Lenore Feeney with discovery materials pertaining to an alleged Open Meetings Violation, indicates she’s, “serving Sound Off Louisiana and Robert Burns for publication (of the discovery requests).”
On March 18, 2024, Belinda Parker Brown, along with six (6) fellow St. Tammany residents, sued the individual Members of the LSPC for an alleged Open Meetings Violation. They had to be sued individually because violations of Louisiana’s Open Meetings Laws entail personal liabilities and Board or Commission Members must therefore be sued individually.
At the most recent meeting of the LSPC on September 19, 2024, Parker Brown personally served discovery materials to the LSPC. Let’s take a look at her perfecting service upon those individual LSPC Members through hand delivery to their attorney of record, Lenore Feeney:
September 19, 2024: Parker Brown serves individual LSPC Members with discovery material.
Please produce all email correspondences entailing the letter which the LSPC Members mailed to the campaign of Collin Sims dated on or around January 20, 2024.
This production should include, but not be limited to, all emails distributed among LSPC Members irrespective of how few or many may have received the email(s), emails to/from LSPC Executive Director Jason Hannaman to/from LSPC Members, emails concerning the letter sent to or received from any members of the public, and any emails concerning the letter sent to or received from any LSP trooper.
Should any of these emails contain drafts of the proposed letter, please provide those drafts of the letter.
You may exclude any correspondence, be it email or otherwise, transpiring between LSPC Members and their legal counsel.
(Admission of Facts)
Please admit that past and/or present Commissioners, including two Defendants in this subject litigation, have been the subjects of one or more media reports entailing alleged impermissible campaign contributions to various political campaigns. {Note: Other media report: WWL 1/11/19.}
Please admit that Defendant Simien gave false testimony on November 3, 2022 when he testified that his law firm had not made any political contributions during his tenure as an LSPC Commissioner.
Please admit that Defendant Simien drafted a letter dated November 9, 2022 to the Judge overseeing the matter being litigated on November 3, 2022 wherein Simien apologized for his false testimony {See PAGE THREE (3) of above link}
Please admit that former LSPC Executive Director Cathy Derbonne sued the LSPC.
Please admit that Derbonne stated in her lawsuit that she was “constructively discharged” over reporting allegedly illegal campaign contributions to the State Board of Ethics.
Please admit that Defendants Simien and Riecke were LSPC members who accepted a hurriedly-drafted resignation letter from Derbonne composed during an Executive Session at the LSPC meeting in January of 2017.
Please admit that, beyond the $130,000 settlement referenced in Request for Admission Number Twenty-Five that the LSPC also incurred approximately $80,805 in legal fees defending the Derbonne litigation.
Please admit that Defendant Riecke had a feature role in a reality television show featuring teams of race cars speeding across the nation’s highways at speeds exceeding 100 MPH.
Please admit that, pertaining to Request for Admission Number Six, Defendant Riecke is on video making a $50,000 bet on one such racing team.
Please admit that, pertaining to Request for Admission Number Six, a race car team is on video opening the trunk of a car to expose approximately 10 or more license plates for swap out, “in the event our license plate is called out over our inboard police radar scanner.”
Please admit that, pertaining to Request for Admission Number Six, Defendant Riecke is on video bragging about concealed radar-detection equipment in the right dashboard of his vehicle.
Please admit that, pertaining to Request for Admission Number Six, Defendant Riecke, after exposing his inboard radar detection and police scanner capabilities, then replaced the in-board façade dashboard utilized to conceal that equipment and also stating on video that, “police tend to frown on this sort of thing, so….”
Please admit that former LSPC Commissioner Sabrina Richardson has been the subject of one or more payroll fraud investigations while serving as a New Orleans Police Officer.
Please admit that former LSPC Commissioner Sabrina Richardson received a suspension from the NOPD as a result of the most-recent payroll fraud investigation involving her.
Please admit that former LSPC Commissioner Sabrian Richardson resigned from the LSPC after media reports of her alleged payroll fraud were aired.
We guess anybody could say that current and past LSPC Membership comprises a group of fine, upstanding citizens!
We sought comment from one long-term LSPC observer with extensive knowledge of LSPC operations who spoke with us on condition of anonymity. His observation: “What this shows is that the LSPC Members are derelict in their duties, and the troopers they oversee are equally if not more derelict in the performance of their duties.”
Based on our own eight-year history of observing LSPC meetings, we find it very difficult to argue against that observer’s assessment of the agency.
Attorney Edward O’Callaghan stating that former U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, and his account of O’Callaghan seeking to prosecute Gregory B. Craig to “even things out” for the prior prosecution of two Trump allies is “categorically false.”
By now, virtually anyone who follows this blog knows how high our anger runs at Louisiana State Police (LSP) entailing the stone wall we’ve hit under the new Jeff Landry / Robert Hodges regime entailing our requests for public records. To say we aren’t happy campers is a huge understatement, and it’s why we said months ago in a widely-watched video that, if something didn’t change, “it’s going to be a long and rough four years.”
While we can’t really justify trying to sue LSP every time they arbitrarily deny us access to public records, the same doesn’t hold true for other media outlets, and that’s particularly the case for The Lens NOLA in New Orleans.
That litigation entailed Hodges’ steadfast refusal to surrender a contract which LSP executed calling for $1,000 an hour to the WilmerHale law firm and, more specifically, former attorney Edward O’Callaghan, another specified attorney with the firm, and other “associates” at the firm.
Ironically, O’Callaghan has now moved on from WilmerHale, and is now with the Cahill, Gordon, and Reindel law firm. We reached out to Gov. Landry’s Office inquiring what impact, if any, O’Callaghan’s departure would have on the contract; however, as has been the case in the past on what few inquiries we’ve made of the Landry administration, we heard nothing back. [Sidebar: On the few occasions we made inquiries of former Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration, we always received timely responses and, further, on what few public records requests we made, we never got even the slightest opposition from his office.]
So, who is Edward O’Callaghan? Well, let’s begin by taking a stroll down memory lane and see then Attorney General-Elect Liz Murrill explain that, for LSP, he should be viewed as the superstar talent who would right the ship via a “top to bottom” review of the agency:
News conference on or around November 29, 2023 during which then-Attorney General-Elect Liz Murrill announces the retention of Edward O’Callaghan to perform a “top to bottom” review of LSP.
Now, no doubt The Lens / Nola, upon hearing the name “Ed O’Callaghan” became quite curious. Why? Well, because former U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, a Trump appointee whom Trump later fired, in his book Holding the Line, paints a very unflattering picture of O’Callaghan (more on that in a moment) who was little more than a political hack for Trump during O’Callaghan’s tenure under Trump Attorney General William Barr.
We at Sound Off Louisiana indicated on that June 1, 2024 feature that we’d be purchasing Berman’s book, which we immediately did.
Unlike ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, however, we did not read the book “over a weekend,” but instead read the book very slowly and meticulously. We found it to be an utterly fascinating read and, at this time, we’re going to repeat every reference to O’Callaghan contained in the book:
(Preface, 1st page): His (O’Callaghan’s) message to Khuzami was unambiguous: it was time for me, Geoffrey Burman, the U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and lifelong Republican, to take one for the home team.
(Preface, 2nd page): Khuzami related that O’Callaghan told him, bluntly, “It’s time for you guys to even things out.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I (Berman) said.
“I wish,” he said, “but no.”
(Page 25-26): “O’Callaghan proceeded to identify specific allegations that he wanted removed, almost all referencing Individual-1 (Trump). It quickly became apparent to Khuzami that, contrary to what O’Callaghan professed, it wasn’t the overall length or detail of the document that concerned him: it was any mention of Individual-1 (Trump).
(Page 30): The directive Barr gave Khuzami, which was amplified that same day by a follow-up call from O’Callaghan, was explicit: not a single investigative step could be taken, not a single document in our possession could be received, until the issue (whether there was a sufficient legal basis for the campaign finance charges to which Trump fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty) was resolved.
(Page 51):…reiteration of preface material above as Berman devoted the entirety of Chapter Four of his book to the “even things out” alleged directive from O’Callaghan.
(Page 54): The referral (on Craig) came from Ed O’Callaghan.
(Page 56-57): Also in the meeting, the NSD attorneys returned to Main Justice and no doubt reported to their superiors that charges against Craig were unlikely. It was soon thereafter that O’Callaghan told Khuzami, “It’s time for you guys to even things out.”
(Page 58): The next communication on this from Main Justice came on the last day of the year. An NSD supervisor called Graff to make sure we would not object to their sharing our work product on Craig with the U. S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
In a call to me (Berman) a few days later, O’Callaghan (with Demers also on the line) wanted to know if I had read the draft prosecution memo that our team initially prepared. Was I really familiar with the facts of the case? Would I look back into it and revisit our decision not to prosecute?
I held my ground. I said yes, of course I had read the memo and that I had been present in the numerous meetings about Craig. I went back through the process that led to our decision and then assured them that we were not reversing it.
(Page 59): When I talked to her about Craig, I restated what I had told O’Callaghan and Demers: he was innocent of any FARA violation, and the potential false statement charges were trivial, at best, and not worth pursuing.
But my words had no impact. The train had left the station.
Our attorneys were told by this trio that the emails in question did not fall under the required preliminary discovery because they were subject to what’s called “the deliberative process privilege” —-which means, essentially, that they were part of the in-office narrative of how an agency reached a decision. We understood this exception and had asserted it at times, most commonly in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.
Even after this about-face, Ross and his DOJ lawyers still refused to hand over the emails. They kept insisting that any emails prior to December 2017, which was when the DOJ made its formal request for the citizenship question to be added (to the census), were protected by the deliberative process privilege.
Everyone may recall that former Gov. Bobby Jindal famously implemented the deliberative process into Louisiana statute, and his successor, John Bel Edwards, did away with it. As just illustrated, Landry tried to have it rise like a Phoenix to quite literally obliterate Louisiana’s Public Records Laws. What Landry underestimated is that conservatives are, by far, more distrusting of government and its operations than most liberals ever dreamed of being!
Landry, upon his frustration with one news reporter who quizzed him on that matter, got so angry at the reporter that he resorted to using an analogy of anyone patronizing one of Louisiana’s fine restaurants and the fact that nobody asks to go watch the chef prepare the meal. Patrons simply trust that the meal will be prepared to near-perfection. For Landry to even remotely suggest that we should place any politician on the same level of trust as a Louisiana chef is patently nuts! The chef warrants far, far more trust than a politician!
Further, if Jeff Landry thinks conservative voters “trust” any politician, including (and in our opinion, most especially) him, he is living in a dream world and is downright delusional. We got tons (and we do mean tons) of correspondence from highly-conservate folk whom we’ve known for a very long time who were infuriated by Landry’s actions to curtail access to public records!
All Landry did was expose the fact that Sen. Heather Cloud was willing to serve as his blocking fullback in sponsoring that bone-headed legislation and, as we’ve reported upon previously, he repaid her blind loyalty by vetoing HB-423 which would have likely cut Cloud’s insurance premiums for her trucking company!
Interestingly enough, Col. Hodges, acting through his own top-notch legal brain trust at LSP, tried to assert deliberative process (among other transparency-blocking efforts) to deny The Lens NOLA that infamous $1,000/hour O’Callaghan contract. Never mind that, as we just pointed out, the deliberative process exception to public records production is nowhere to be found in Louisiana Statutes anymore (which necessitated Landry calling upon Cloud to attempt to get it back in after LSP made fools of themselves in the Hodges filings).
In a long and bewildering process which we’re choosing not to go into, LSP failed in its efforts, and The Lens /NOLA got its hands on the document.
That left only the matter of attorney fees which may be taxed against Hodges and/or LSP for withholding the document in the first place. It’s unclear whether Hodges may be held personally liable for his failure to surrender the document as Landry succeeded in passing legislation to remove this personal liability from any Custodian of Records (another strike against Landry in our book). What we don’t know is whether that legislation can be applied retroactively to the subject matter of this case. Even if it cannot, however, our recollection is that the previous statute calling for personal liability to the designated Custodian of Records was capped at $100/day.
The Contradictory Hearing for LSP’s Motion was set for Monday, September 30, 2024, and we attended, and it was quite a show!
Former First Circuit Court of Appeal Judge Michael McDonald had to hear the matter because the original trial Judge, Eboni Johnson Rose, was booted from the Bench by the Supreme Court of Louisiana. While the Louisiana Supreme Court outlined several acts which, in our opinion, justified Johnson Rose’s removal from the bench, it probably didn’t help her cause at all when she stated with court recording equipment going and the matter therefore being on the record that, EBRP DA Hillar Moore just wants to, “stick every ni@@er in jail!”
Judge McDonald stated on the record that he had, “no idea what I’m supposed to do with this.” That comment elicited considerable laughter from the packed courtroom audience. McDonald emphasized, however, that he was not inclined to overrule a sitting judge who had the benefit of overseeing the entire matter. McDonald also indicated that he’d prefer for no judgment on Monday’s proceedings be entered into the record because he indicated that he wanted to preserve LSP’s appeal opportunities and did not want the clock to begin running given that the matter was continued until December 9, 2024.
Nevertheless, both sides agreed a filing would be entered for Monday’s proceedings wherein LSP’s appeal rights are not affected. McDonald also emphasized that he very well may not be the judge to hear the matter on December 9, 2024. In the meantime, both sides were encouraged to work together to reach a settlement on “reasonable attorney fees.”
If anyone looks at the exhibits supplied by both sides on the filings above, what is readily apparent (at least to us) is that everyone is treating the contract like a hot potato, and that is particularly true of Attorney General Liz Murrill, who is on record as indicating she was unaware of the specifics of even the interim contract which was negotiated while both she and Landry served in the AG’s Office. Perhaps old Jeff snuck that one in on her!
At any rate, we think we may know why everybody now wants distance between themselves and that contract (with the notable exceptions of Hodges and Landry). From one of The Lens / NOLA‘s emails to AG Liz Murrill’s Office:
On Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 12:55PM Nick Chrastil <nchrastiJ@,thelensnola.org> wrote:
Hi Lester,
I had a few questions for the AG’s office regarding the contract with WilmerHale for work regarding the state police. The contract rate of $750/hour appears to violate state law that prohibits agencies from paying more than $500/hour for legal services. (La. R.S. 42: 262
.(D)_) It is also well above the AG’s fee schedule that maxes out at $225 an hour.
Dane Ciolino, who teaches legal ethics at Loyola said he doesn’t believe the contract abides by state law: “I don’t see any authority for it in the Louisiana law. It does seem to exceed the hourly rates. typically charged and authorized by statute. And I’m not aware of any exception that would let them charge those kinds of rates in excess of $500 an hour.”
– Does the AG’s office have any explanation for how this rate was approved, and why it doesn’t violate state law?
– I’m also wondering if the AG’s office is able to provide any more detailed information about what exactly WilmerHale attorneys have been tasked with.
Get back to me as soon as possible. Happy to jump on the phone to discuss. My deadline is 5pm. Thanks!
Because of the extensive briefing required for each of the exemptions claimed and the peremptory exceptions, we spent over 102 hours on this matter. I incurred the majority of those hours (67 hours) at a rate of $250/hour. Katie as the director and supervisor billed at $400/hr.*
Our total for the hours worked is $30,205.50.
We also were forced to travel to Baton Rouge two times incurring travel expenses of $1,052.72.
Finally, our court costs for the extensive filings are $1,019.59 in court fees.
Therefore, we are seeking reimbursement for $32,277.81.
*Note– we believe Katie is worth at least the same as Edward O’Callahan and the associates at
WilmerHale and thus she should be billing at $1000/per hour. But in an attempt at compromise,
we are willing to settle for a lesser hourly award.
We are aware of another attorney whom we’re choosing not to name but for whom LSP played hardball (before ultimately caving) in trying to assert that he should be paid, “no more than the public defender is paid.”
Obviously, some attorneys simply need to learn the lay of the land, and that lay of the land is that the sky’s the limit (legality be damned) if you’re “in tight” with Governor Landry and/or AG Liz Murrill but, if not, be prepared to accept mere table scraps and be thankful you got even that!
So, has the Landry administration gone “all in” for a Trump victory with the potential for Ed O’Callaghan to be named the next Attorney General for the United States? If so, would that scenario ultimately culminate into the gradual and complete meltdown of the ongoing two-and-a-half year DOJ Pattern and Practices Investigation of LSP?
We have our own thoughts on that matter, but we’ll also pose the question of whether Landry’s act of pursuing this potentially-illegal contract with O’Callaghan may be viewed unfavorably by the next U. S. Attorney General should Trump fail to prevail?
If so, and if any possible prosecution of Landry (e.g. influence peddling or whatever other crime may be deemed applicable) may ensue, we’ll hope the foundation for any such prosecution will exceed that of a mere desire to “even things out!”
Former prominent New Orleans attorney Ashton O’Dwyer (who now resides in Houston) appearing before the Louisiana State Police Commission (LSPC) on June 9, 2022.
O’Dwyer’s frustrations with LSP stem from a pretty severe beating he endured at the hands of LSP in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when he refused to leave his home and/or surrender a gun he possessed for protection.
More recently, O’Dwyer has been engaging in a deep (and we do mean deep) dive into the filings associated with the New Orleans Archdiocese’s bankruptcy. O’Dwyer has been supplying us with those filings, and they constitute incredible eye openers.
This feature is actually going to be about the easiest post we’ve ever done because O’Dwyer has drawn the attention of Jeff Crouere, who hosts the daily “Ringside Politics” show on WGSO Radio in New Orleans.
On Monday, September 23, 2024, O’Dwyer commenced with the first installment of what is to be a three-installment feature on the incredible revelations these bankruptcy filings are exposing.
We do not want to take anything away from nor add anything to the fine work that O’Dwyer and Crouere have done and will be doing on this subject matter. Accordingly, we are merely going to strongly encourage our site visitors to listen to Segment One of this fascinating feature. Anyone is welcome to do so by the following simple steps:
2. Advance the tape to the 1-hour, 20-minute, and 25-second point.
3. Listen until the end of the show (a 15-second sequential fast forwarding is available to advance through commercials if desired).
We know everyone choosing to listen to O’Dwyer’s incredible revelations, which are derived from countless hours of meticulous readings of bankruptcy filings, will come away stunned. Furthermore, O’Dwyer indicates to us that the other two segments will be even more intriguing.
Accordingly, we can’t wait to publish guidance for our site visitors to listen to Installment Two of this fascinating series!!
