Painter alleges Gov. Edwards’ office, at IG Street’s urging, terminated his attorney right after he landed DOTD job; with the attorney agreeing to accept “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to refrain from returning to DOTD after successful Civil Service appeal.

Louisiana Inspector General Stephen Street, Jr.

Anyone who has observed our prior features on Murphy Painter may have thought, “So What?  This is old material entailing a has-been governor (Jindal) who’ll never rise to power again.”

If so, then we’d suggest watching installment seven of our series below!  In it, Painter educates us on what all has transpired in his still-active civil suit against the Louisiana Office of Inspector General (OIG) and Stephen Street, Jr., in his capacity as Inspector General.

Here’s that fascinating interview:

Installment 7 of Sound Off Louisiana’s in-depth interviews with former Louisiana Alcohol and Tobacco Control Commissioner Murphy Painter.

We look forward to delivering Episode 8 in the near future.

Previous Segments of Our Interviews with Murphy Painter:

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

Episode 6

If you would like to be added to our Sound Off Louisiana email list to be notified of future posts, simply go to our home page and scroll to the bottom (mobile devices) or to the top of the right-hand column (desktops).  Supply your email address within the subscribe box.  You’ll then receive an automated email from Word Press, and all you have to do is click on the blue “confirm follow” bar contained within that email, and you’ll begin receiving great posts such as the preceding one above.

Stellar AP feature reveals that investigation into Ronald Greene’s death got serious only 7 days after Sound Off Louisiana broke the feature on the true nature of that death.

Badge of the late LSP Trooper Chris Hollingsworth still stained with the blood from the arrest and death of Ronald Greene on May 10, 2019 (Photo Courtesy of AP).

We want to assure our subscribers and casual visitors that we are working on our own original feature entailing an LSP development; however, as most everyone knows, we are very methodical in producing our features.  The one we’re working on now is taking us a while to try and cover all possible bases, but we are working diligently on it.

As a result, for the second time in less than a week, we’re going to have to make this feature a quick post and give all of the credit for its contents to the outstanding reporting skills of AP reporters Jim Mustian and Jake Bleiberg and their phenomenal feature today regarding the final words to LSP’s Internal Affairs Division of the late LSP Trooper Chris Hollingsworth, who has been identified as the trooper most culpable in the death of Ronald Greene on May 10, 2019.

We used their stellar feature and the two media features embedded thereof to produce the following single video to constitute today’s Sound Off Louisiana video, but we want everyone to realize that all of the credit for its contents belongs to Mustian and Bleiberg!  Here is that consolidated video:

Consolidated video from this Mustian / Bleiberg AP feature

The most stunning thing we uncovered from AP’s first-ever release of Hollingsworth’s words provided to LSP’s Internal Affairs (IA) is the fact that LSP never conducted ANY type of formal substantive investigation of what REALLY happened in the Ronald Greene arrest until seven days after we first reported on Greene’s arrest and death on Thursday, September 10, 2020.

The above IA interview was conducted on September 17, 2020 (as stated in the article, 496 days after Greene’s death)!  Then-LSP Col. Kevin Reeves notified Hollingsworth of his intent to terminate him the next day, September 18, 2020.  Hollingsworth would die of a single-car crash only four days later (on September 22, 2022).

If anything, our original title for our initial feature linked above (LSP clouded in secrecy in Greene’s in-custody death) has turned out to be a very obvious understatement.  If we were drafting the headline today with the benefit of 18 months of hindsight, the headline would also most certainly include the phrase “blanketed in corruption!”

We hope to have our own, original LSP feature out early next week; however, as we indicated in our previous feature, we’re swamped with a ton of features we’re trying to gradually roll out.  The task is not easy when there is so much problematic activity transpiring in state and local governmental entities’ operations.

If you would like to be added to our Sound Off Louisiana email list to be notified of future posts, simply go to our home page and scroll to the bottom (mobile devices) or to the top of the right-hand column (desktops).  Supply your email address within the subscribe box.  You’ll then receive an automated email from Word Press, and all you have to do is click on the blue “confirm follow” bar contained within that email, and you’ll begin receiving great posts such as the preceding one above.

 

Plenty of corruption news today: LSPC member officially under investigation, Gov. Edwards’ Auction Board appointee sentenced to 10 years at hard labor, LSP Trooper Satcher’s trial for domestic abuse once again delayed.

Gov. Edwards’ Louisiana Auction Licensing Board appointee Jacob Brown, who was sentenced to 10 years at hard labor earlier this month for stiffing Louisiana taxpayers with worthless checks after he was awarded state surplus auctions soon after Gov. Edwards appointed him to the Auction Board.

For this feature, we feel we have little choice but to resort to the “C. B. Forgotston method” of delivering blog posts.  Forgotston was very, very instrumental in Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns forming this blog.  Forgotston was known for publishing extremely short, succinct, and to-the-point blog posts.

Because we’re getting inundated with evidence of a total overload of corruption this week, we feel that we have little choice but to deploy the “Forgotston delivery method.”  So, here is today’s blog post dedicated to C. B.’s memory and respectfully borrowing upon his reporting style as best we can:

–> Gov. Edwards’ Louisiana State Police Commission (LSPC) appointee Sabrina Richardson under investigation for alleged impropriates entailing off duty details.  This is not her first rodeo in that arena as a similar investigation transpired in 2015.

—>  Gov. Edwards’ Louisiana Auctioneer Licensing Board (LALB) appointee Jacob Brown sentenced to 10 years at hard labor with credit for time served entailing theft of $180,000+ for worthless checks to the State of Louisiana.  Those worthless checks were issued soon after Edwards appointed him to the Auction Board with his administration then proceeding to award Brown lucrative state surplus auction contracts.

Brown, who used the taxpayer funds to help feed a drug addiction (which we believe should have been VERY obvious to his colleagues while he did serve on the Auction Board), will receive credit for the time during which he has already been incarcerated for his theft.  Brown was also ordered to pay $175,342 in restitution.  He faces similar charges entailing private consignors in another jurisdiction in Louisiana, and the credit for time served applies only for the matter in 19th JDC in Baton Rouge for which sentencing was handed down earlier this month.

–>  LSP Trooper Michael Lynn Satcher, II, who was arrested for alleged domestic abuse on October 12, 2019, had his trial, which was scheduled to commence today (after several prior settings), continued without date.  Our sources indicate that Satcher’s defense attorney may need more information from the prosecutor (Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office).

We really don’t like doing these “wham bam, thank you ma’am” features as we consider what makes us distinct is the extensive level of background and depth we provide, but we’re presently already working on more upcoming features than we can possibly crank out in any reasonable timeframe, so we simply felt we had little choice but to pay tribute to the late C. B. Forgotston and borrow his style on this particular feature.  There was nobody better than him at deploying the “just the facts ma’am” style of reporting, but it’s just not our own preferred style of reporting.

If you would like to be added to our Sound Off Louisiana email list to be notified of future posts, simply go to our home page and scroll to the bottom (mobile devices) or to the top of the right-hand column (desktops).  Supply your email address within the subscribe box.  You’ll then receive an automated email from Word Press, and all you have to do is click on the blue “confirm follow” bar contained within that email, and you’ll begin receiving great posts such as the preceding one above.