Former Louisiana Auctioneer Licensing Board attorney (and former Louisiana State Senator and convicted felon) Larry S. Bankston, whose questioning of Robert Burns in a deposition on February 6, 2014 is the most-watched video ever published by Burns even though it has never been published on his Sound Off Louisiana blog .
A most gratifying event transpired last week. Two very dedicated Sound Off Louisiana blog followers called founder Robert Burns by phone and asked if everything was all right and expressed concern that no post had been published for a little while.
Obviously, those were inquiries for which we are most grateful. The reality is that, on Wednesday, October 24, 2018, Burns experienced a “toothache from hell,” which resulted in him scheduling an immediate visit to his dentist. Upon inspection of said suspicious tooth, his dentist immediately issued antibiotics and scheduled root canal surgery for the following Wednesday, October 31, 2018 (last Wednesday). The root canal was a success; however, to say that the ensuing pain thereafter was excruciating would in no way be an understatement. Accordingly, as most can imagine, it’s not very conducive to appear in front of a camera to publish a feature even for a short one which would be overshadowed by the pain of a tooth, especially when that intense pain had radiated both to the jaw and the right ear.
Rest assured, however, Burns will be back making posts in short order, and we’ve got some intriguing posts to distribute! In the meantime, we’re sending out this feature just so folk can know Burns is okay, and we’re going to kill two birds with one stone.
We’ve been asked numerous times what our most watched video in our history is. We’ll provide a two-part answer and, in the process, provide one video to debut for the first time ever on Sound Off Louisiana.
1. The most-watched video originally issued as a Sound Off post is the infamous hostile exchange between Louisiana State Police Commission members Jared Riecke and Lloyd Grafton, which can be viewed as the THIRD video on this feature (the action got heated at the 1:20 mark of the video). As of this publication, that video had 1,685 unique views. The second most-watched video entailed the recent Coach Goode feature, for which there are 1,080 unique views as of the publication of this feature.
2. Videos referenced in # 1 notwithstanding, BY FAR, and we certainly mean BY FAR, the most watched video associated with Sound Off Louisiana posts, even though we’ve never even posted it to Sound Off Louisiana because the video was produced 15 months before the Sound Off blog was formed, entails a segment of the payroll fraud deposition regarding the Louisiana Auctioneer Licensing Board (LALB) wherein Burns was deposed and questioned by the LALB’s hired gun, convicted felon Larry S. Bankston. It’s about a seven-minute clip, and we’ll let it make its Sound Off debut at this time because of the sheer number of unique views by the general public. which stands at 42,327 at the time of this publication (easily tens of thousands of views higher than the next-closest video) as well as the public comments beneath it, which stand at 72 as of this publication:
Six-minute excerpt of payroll fraud deposition wherein Robert Burns is questioned by convicted felon Larry S. Bankston on February 6, 2014, only 59 days after the Inspector General’s Office issued this damning report wherein Edmonds was cited as “being paid while out of the office performing no public purpose.”
Regarding Mr. Bankston’s constant harping on whether Burns had ever made a Facebook friend request to Edmonds’ husband, Matthew, who is an interior designer himself and Edmonds was investigated for payroll fraud entailing that agency as well (and the above linked report is equally applicable for the Interior Design Board as it is for the LALB), it’s an open question why Bankston would redact out the top of a screen shot he asserts is one of a list of Matthew Edmonds’ friend requests. When he indicated to Burns in the video above, that he “is representing to you (Burns) that this is a screen shot of his Facebook friends requests,” Burns came incredibly close to responding: “Well, you are a convicted felon who has served 33 months in Federal prison for accepting a bribe as a sitting Louisiana State Senator, so forgive me, Mr. Bankston, for my unwillingness to accept ANY representation you make as being truthful!” As is evidenced by the video, Burns opted not to hit Bankston right upside his forehead with a two-by-four.
The bottom line is this: Burns never made a Facebook friend request of Matthew Edmonds (or certainly not knowlingly), and he did not do so for a specific reason! It was Matthew Edmonds who was posting Facebook accounts of the Edmonds family on various excursions such as vacationing in Disneyworld, visiting relatives in Kansas, going sightseeing in New York, etc., all while his wife, Sandy, was simultaneously reporting being “on the clock” (with BOTH boards) for those same time periods! It was also Burns who turned all of that documentation over to the Office of Inspector General after that office began an investigation of Edmonds after Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera turned the matter over to the IG’s office after his own office’s review of her payroll practices resulted in a report point-blank stating that both boards needed to recover monies improperly paid to Edmonds [Sidebar: Neither board recovered a penny from the overpayments Purpera asserts transpired; furthermore, the LALB, at its next meeting after the report’s public release actually granted Edmonds a pay raise, citing “all she had to deal with regarding public records requests” (for her own timesheets)].
Hence, it would have been utterly stupid for Burns to have Facebook friended Matthew Edmonds because such an act on Burns’ part would have tipped Edmonds off that Burns was monitoring his Facebook page! Burns kept waiting for Bankston to ask, “Have you ever visited Matthew Edmonds’ Facebook page?” to which Burns would have truthfully answered, “Yes.” Obviously, the reason for Burns visiting his page was to accumulate the aforementioned damning material. To this day, it remains a mystery to Burns why Bankston never asked that question (perhaps lack of understanding of Facebook?).
Interestingly enough, days after the Inspector General’s Office interviewed Edmonds about her payroll fraud, Burns was specifically blocked by Matthew Edmonds from visiting his Facebook page! Go figure!
So, sit tight. Sound Off Louisiana will have more intriguing posts in the days ahead once, and viewers won’t have to watch Burns reaching for his right jaw and menacing in pain! We give a special thanks to the two subscribers who called us. You know who you are, and we certainly appreciate your dedication and obvious strong interest in our blog!
In the meantime, if you have not voted early, don’t forget to get out and vote tomorrow!
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thanks for the update!
42,327 views!!! Too bad there wasn’t that many people aware of what was going on while it was actually happening. Perhaps the boards would have been pressured to recoup their funds and properly sanction the perpetrator.