Gov. Edwards bows to attorney cabal and insists on the re-hiring of Stephen Holliday after his arrest for striking his daughter with a closed fist in the face and left forearm, resulting in school nurse alerting authorities.

Stephen Holliday, Gov. Edwards’ Director of Commercial Trucking within the Office of Multimodial Commerce.

Viewers will recall our first feature entailing Gov. Edwards’ controversial hiring of Stephen Holliday, who presently serves as the Commercial Trucking Director of the Office of Multimodal Commerce.  For this Sound Off Louisiana feature, we’re going to dispense with our usual obligatory video (though a brief, one-minute video exists on our prior feature if anyone would like to view it) and get straight into providing more detail (along with our support documents) on Holliday’s “domestic abuse.”

Let’s consider the following sequence of events which we’ve now been told transpired:

1.  Holliday is hired by Edwards in 2016 as an Executive Management Officer for the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF).

2.  The then-Secretary of LDWF, Charlie Melancon, uncovers the fact Holliday had a domestic abuse conviction the prior year and therefore seeks Holliday’s immediate resignation, which Holliday reluctantly provides.

3.  Edwards convinces Melancon to resign.

4.  Edwards insists LDWF re-hire Holliday, but the agency refuses.

5.  After staying in limbo for about a year, Holliday is quietly hired to his present position in January, 2018.

Why was Edwards so adamant that Holliday be hired?  Simple.  Because his attorney cabal of supporters, the same crew of characters who arranged for a New Orleans blogger to conduct a video interview with a prostitute who would state (falsely) that then-U. S. Sen. David Vitter, Edwards’ opponent, “got me pregnant and then insisted that I have an abortion” told him to.  That’s why!  They went to those lengths because they very much feared Vitter’s “Together Louisiana Strong” platform to institute tort reform (and most especially reducing the jury trial threshold to zero) in Louisiana.  In short, Vitter was going to annihilate their business model (the ones that keep the television station ads going non-stop during daytime TV shows and on evening newscasts).

Well, let’s just examine exactly what that attorney cabal managed to pull off by flexing their collective muscles with old “Honor Code” shall we?

 First, we have the Affidavit of Probably Cause on Holliday’s arrest.  Let’s take a look (here’s a link for the Domestic Battery Abuse Statute ):

Now, by our own admission, the arresting officer’s handwriting is not the best, so we’ve created a document with his written account typed, which follows:

So, we have “Honor Code” Gov. Edwards’ attorney cabal flexing their muscles to go to bat for Mr. Holliday who, as is easily ascertained above, struck his daughter with a closed fist in the face and left forearm, thus causing the school nurse to need to alert authorities.

Next, as part of the ongoing arrangement for Holliday and his former wife to provide for their daughter, a fairly routine judgment was entered into Court on January 20, 2016 calling for each parent’s financial responsibilities for the young lady.  However, as perhaps could be expected given Holliday’s actions (e.g. running from police) in our first feature, Holliday didn’t cooperate.  Accordingly, his ex-wife initiated Contempt of Court proceedings.

We are told that, while working at LDWF, Holiday would be “hold up” in an office unwilling to come out or answer the door.  That is quite plausible because, unable to serve Holliday with the Contempt of Court documents, his ex-wife had to resort to hiring a private process-server, who ultimately got him served at 8:40 a.m. on October 5, 2016:

The list of potential witnesses which his ex-wife supplied to the Court for the Contempt of Court hearing makes for interesting viewing as well.  Let’s take a look, shall we?

Holliday saw fit to honor the Court with his presence for the hearing on October 11, 2016, at which time a Consent Judgment was agreed to and formally entered into the Court record on November 16, 2016, and the Rule for Contempt of Court against Holliday was dismissed

We reached out to Gov. Edwards’ Office for comment, but they have not responded to our phone call seeking comment nor our email seeking comment.  Of course, that just may be because, when Gov. Edwards appeared at the Baton Rouge Press Club on January 7, 2019 and Robert Burns was engaging in an exchange with LaTonya Smith Scott, AARP’s State Communications Director, after the meeting and after Scott had grilled Gov. Edwards on home health care for Louisiana’s elderly population, Richard Carbo, Edwards’ newly appointed Campaign Chairman, came right up, interrupted the conversation between Scott and Burns and told Scott, “Don’t listen to him.  He doesn’t publish anything but junk.”

Perhaps we’ve pleased Mr. Carbo with this latest installment of “junk.”

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