Update: Meffert indictment is here

Gotta love that big bold "FELONY" dominating the page.


Meffert Indictment

Federal Charges, Brah

Mef lab goes down. US Attorney Jim Letten will be holding a press conference at 12:30.

It is starting earlier than one might expect because it will take so much time to read off the counts. Don't they normally do these things starting at 1:30 or 2?


The Times-Pic is reporting that it isn't just Greg Meffert and Mark St. Pierre who will face a rap sheet. His wife Linda Meffert will also be indicted for accounting work that she did for the St. Pierre syndicate.

David Hammer describes the charges for Linda as "a surprise," which I think is accurate.

It tells you something that Letten is going after Mrs. Muppet.

--

This bit is unadulterated speculation but nonetheless, the charges against Lady Mef indicate to me that Greg Meffert has refused to cooperate or turned down generous plea agreements. I imagine that Letten and his people used the threat of charges against his wife to get him to talk and now they're making good on the threat.

Greg Meffert, as AZ, as pointed out earlier in the week, has seemed in denial about what was coming down the tracks.

I hope for the sake of their young kids that Greg and/or Linda Meffert capitulate to inquiry from prosecutors.

What combination of fraud, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy counts are we going to see on the rap sheet?

--

Because this has been anticipated for so long, it is perhaps easy to lose track of just how disgusting this is.

Greg Meffert wasn't just in charge of the Office of Technology. This guy was Deputy Mayor. He was almost Recovery Director. He was the Mayor's right hand man. It's not just the millions of dollars lost to the Russian nesting doll contract schemes these people were facilitating, it's also the unquantifiable corruption of the city decision-making engine and the cynical truth that our city's recovery effort rested in hands that dropped us to satiate the impulsive desires of their own sticky fingers.

Mefstimony turns out to have been...

...bullshit

Complete Bullshit

I wonder if Meffert will be called back to the stand for a more hostile examination.

Sworn Mefstimony

I walked into Judge Ledet's courtroom this morning at ten past eleven right as Greg Meffert was getting up to walk out.

"I gotta pee," he whispered way too loudly at no one in particular.

And so I found myself in Orleans Parish Civil District Court to check out the latest chapter in the ongoing crime camera saga.

I ended up feeling ill and going home to rest at the first recess so please check out David Hammer's reporting from the courtroom for the T-P, but I will add a couple of my own observations.

Hammer says Meffert "exuded confidence on the stand."

That's not an unfair characterization of how he conducted himself as testimony began. But watching him fidget in his seat beforehand makes me more inclined to consider his cute joke about talking to Drew Brees about his fantasy team to be a nervous defense mechanism. He seems to be a confident-sounding guy naturally. I remember when he went on Garland's show to defend himself. He sounded just as confident then, though he was also extremely agitated.

He was much calmer in court, and seemed to grow more comfortable and confident as the Jim Garner, the plaintiffs' attorney, established a pace to the questioning.

I suppose the big story is that Meffert even testified in the first place, or more specifically, that he didn't plead the Fifth at every opportunity, but someone must have tipped everyone off beforehand.

I really wanted to hear some audible gasps but none came.

So why didn't Meffert invoke the Fifth Amendment?

Isn't he worried about incriminating himself?

I'm just speculating here, but he wouldn't have to worry about incriminating himself if he'd inked a deal to cooperate with the Department of Justice in the swirling federal investigation of City Hall. If a plea agreement is already in place, Meffert may be assured immunity from additional charges stemming from his testimony in the crime camera civil case.

Meffert seemed primed to throw former employee Chris Drake under the bus. Meffert constantly reiterated how much he had on his plate and how he had trusted Drake and delegated the crime camera project to him.

Also from the T-P write-up:

"Good, bad or indifferent, Hawaii definitely had nothing to do with crime cameras, nothing to do with the city of New Orleans," Meffert said. "I had this buisiness. I had the opportunity to give him (Nagin) a break. We went up there as friends. We barbecued. That was when he broke his ankle, if you remember that."

Meffert said he paid out of his own pocket for a "house" in Hawaii and had the mayor and his family stay there with him. He said he was there to meet with economic development officials in Waikiki, but was also there "for pleasure."

Meffert also used the NetMethods credit card to send the Nagins on first-class flights to Jamaica after Hurricane Katrina, but he hasn't fielded any questions about that today.

Meffert said the credit card was a way to supplement his $150,000 annual City Hall income, which amounted to a "50 percent pay cut" for him after some success in the private sector. He likened it to extra-duty pay for a police officer and said the card had nothing to do with crime cameras or work for Dell.

"My relationship with NetMethods was contemplated from the get-go of my coming on with the city," Meffert said, although he started at City Hall in 2002 and NetMethods wasn't created by St. Pierre until 2004. He said he needed the extra income to justify taking the city job because he had enjoyed an income of "a few hundred thousand dollars a year" at the time.

Meffert said the work he did for NetMethods had to do with kiosks and Web solutions the company developed, not crime cameras.

"I saw no conflict in what I endeavored to do," Meffert said.

Kudos to Hammer for contextualizing Meffert's testimony with the truth. Meffert said that the side pot credit card was part of the deal that allowed him to leave the private sector even though he didn't get a credit card from NetMethods until a few years later since NetMethods didn't yet exist when Meffert moved into City Hall.

For reasons I don't understand, the plaitiffs' attorney Jim Garner didn't press Mr. Meffert on that, didn't follow up with any questions seeking to clarify when Mr. Meffert began receiving payments from NetMethods.

I caught another really interesting quote that Hammer omitted from the T-P article from that same string of dialogue highlighted above.

Referencing the credit card he received from NetMethods, Meffert was explaining how he didn't think having this side account made a difference. He compared it to how NOPD officers have moonlighting gigs on the side of their regular hours on the force.

"When I decided to take a job with the city, the concept [of having a credit card paid for by NetMethods] was introduced to me."

(That quote might not be exactly verbatim, the part that caught my ear was "the concept was introduced to me," so I admit that I might not have the opening clause exactly word-for-word.)

That, to me, begs the question: Who, Mr. Meffert, was it that first introduced you to the concept of maintaining secret expense accounts with private contractors with whom the city does business?

When the court broke for lunch, I had to go home.

Hopefully this won't be the last time I make it in to watch this case

What are your thoughts? Does Meffert's decision to waive his right not to incriminate himself indicate a deal? Or do you think Meffert believes he's at no risk of incriminating himself?

Dell stall tactics fall flat

I've obtained some court documents from the crime camera civil case.

In the article about Meffert's hilarious change-of-venue motion, there was another late breaking item hidden toward the end of the piece.

In a strange twist Friday, a previously absent company sought to intervene on the side of the plaintiffs, Southern Electronics and Active Solutions.

More than two years after the two companies filed the lawsuit, Camsoft Data Systems Inc., appeared in court Friday, claiming its right to a third of anything Southern and Active might win at trial.

Camsoft was initially a subcontractor to Southern Electronics, and helped put up networked crime cameras for a pilot project for City Hall in 2004 and 2005. The Baton Rouge company claims it helped develop a special network system for the crime cameras, and therefore deserves to have an equal share of the plaintiffs' pie.

Ironically, even though Camsoft's attorney Jason Melancon said Friday he agrees with the gist of the plaintiffs' case, his basis for intervening is a claim that Southern Electronics owes Camsoft money for work it did on the New Orleans camera project.

The unexpected intervention sent the courtroom into a tizzy.

I only had vaguest recollection of Camsoft but it didn't seem to me to be relevant to the case that they had some sort of payment issue with Southern Electronics. That ought to be handled in a separate case. It would seem to be quite suspicious that such an intervention would suddenly surface at the eleventh hour. Anyway, these documents should shed some more light on this.

The first is a motion to appoint special process server filed by the lawyers for Dell, who also filed to stay the trial to subpoena and depose the folks from Camsoft.

SCAN6724_000


The second document is the response from the Plaintiffs' lawyers. This is a good read. Essentially, Dell asserted that they'd been kept unaware of the relationship between the Plaintiffs and Camsoft and claimed that in their depositions, Plaintiffs had failed to disclose Camsoft under questioning.

The lawyers for the Plaintiffs document in detail the numerous times Camsoft or its employees came up during discovery.

"A search of the documents produced by Plaintiffs in this litigation reveals Carlo MacDonald of Camsoft was referenced at least 1,613 times and Camsoft itself was referenced at least 410 times."

Lawyers also pointed to another stunning example, when Dell's lead council, Phil Whittman, the same guy who filed the motion to stay, asked Brian Fitzpatrick of Active Solutions during a deposition:

"Did you have anything to do with the camsoft data systems verbiage wire portion?"

So when Plaintiff attorneys excoriate Dell lawyers within the document for "feigned ignorance," this is what they're talking about. They then follow that up with another 130 pages of supporting evidence including emails included as trial exhibits and depositions.

PDF of Letter to Counel Enc Opp to Dell's Emerg Motion for s (00040822)

I don't think I've ever seen some of the emails before but I don't have time for a close read. If you have a chance to browse through these and find anything interesting that we haven't seen before, please please post away in the comments.

Signals

Today, the Department of Justice confirmed an ongoing federal probe targeting Greg Meffert. It has long been assumed that he was a primary target of what everyone can boost my ego by calling the e-maelstrom.

First, it's comforting to finally see this confirmed.

Second, let's speculate:

Though announced on a Friday, to see this come out on Katrina Anniversary weekend (also known as the Great National Media Flashback of 2009) would indicate to me that US Attorney Jim Letten is making a strong commitment in regard to pursuing this case and others closely related to it.

Keep in mind that with the closure of the Bill and Mose Jefferson trials (especially Mose, since he was tried locally), the local DOJ office's labor resources diverted to those cases are now available to be deployed to work on other investigations.

Thus, starting this weekend and over the next 4-6 weeks, I would advise keeping a close eye on the papers and the blogs.

Not that you don't already.

Repetitive Visions

Remember when former Deputy Mayor and Chief Technology Officer Greg Meffert said when asked about his jaunts to the strip club Visions in his recent deposition in a related civil case?

"Sometimes I'd pay for myself. Sometimes they'd pay."

I really want to know whether or not "myself" means using the special Mark St. Pierre-financed American Express card from NetMethods. Because that's still money coming from the same individuals getting all the IT contracts.

Going through the NetMethods credit card records released just the other day, I was perplexed by several gargantuan charges for "food and beverages" that always ended in nice even numbers.

Turns out strip clubs have very different policies about how they list themselves on credit card statements. Larry Flynt's Hustler Club and the San Fransisco Gold Club were pretty marked quite clearly. Club 390 in Chicago, patronized to the tune of several hundred dollars in 2004, was also pretty easy to figure out.

It took a little bit more creativity to figure out who "L.I.G. LLC" and "RCI Entertainment were."

RCI turned out to be Rick's Caberet, where Meffert dropped an even $1000 in March of 2005.

L.I.G. turned out to be our old favorite on Downman Road, Visions.

04/08/05: $1,400 plus another separate charge of $102
04/06/06: $1,160
09/20/06: $840

Kinda fun that the charges around the April 2005 jaunt went like this:

8th - Visions
9th - One night stay at the Ritz-Carlton
15th - Rite-Aid

Have a great weekend!

Guys Night Out

I know I said I was going to be away for a few days as I unpack my new place but I can't help it...

This T-P has posted (pdf) all of the charges that former Chief Technology Officer Greg Meffert made to the credit card he was given by NetMethods, a dummy company set up by city contractor Mark St. Pierre.

As one might imagine there's some interesting stuff in there. Tons of charges related to resort travel with the Mayor, tons of fancy meals at Sean Cummings' International House Hotel and other well-known food and beverage hot spots. The man simply could not go out to lunch without dropping $75 or more. All told, there were over $130,000 in charges.

There were also a high number of airline flights purchased for he, his wife, and his kids. One cost that's justly generating a lot of sensationalist buzz is a $2,675 charge Meffert made to the NetMethods account for his good time at the San Fransisco's Gold Club, "San Fransisco's Premier Gentlemen's Club."

Does anyone know what kind of left-wing services were rendered in that commie pinko San Fransisco club that he couldn't just have easily received from his favorite local spots, Visions, Rick's Cabaret, or Larry Flynt's Hustler Club?

What was especially sleazy about the charge in San Fran becomes more obvious when you dig a little bit into why he was over on the left coast in the first place. Looking at the credit card records, here is what it appears occurred:

On March 9th, 2006, Greg Meffert purchased three round trip flights between New Orleans and San Jose, California for his wife and two boys. A few days later, he booked his own flight to San Jose by way of San Fransisco. He would be joining his family for a vacation at Yosemite National Park - food, lodging, and souvenirs paid for by NetMethods. But of course it took him an extra day to get from San Fransisco to San Jose. There was business to attend to at the Gold Club.

Who knows? It is possible that he only went to the Gold Club between flights. There are no other charges in San Fransisco listed to the NetMethods account.

Another couple of charges that I thought you might find interesting involve single one-night stays at the New Orleans Ritz Carlton Hotel from April and July of 2005. You won't see these reported as newsworthy by the proper media but I have no particular problem leveling the insinuation given what we know about Mr. Meffert's. . . appetites.

Vay-Cay!

David Hammer: Attorney claims Nagin, Meffert took 'plenty of other trips' paid for by city vendor

Meanwhile, the attorney for two companies who are suing the city over a controversial crime camera project told The Times-Picayune that he plans to question the mayor about a series of other lavish trips when his deposition resumes. The attorney, Glad Jones, said credit card statements show those trips were also financed by NetMethods, owned by the city vendor, Mark St. Pierre.

NetMethods also paid for a vacation that former Chief Technology Officer Greg Meffert, the mayor and their families took to Hawaii in December 2004.

Nagin and Meffert took "plenty of other trips" at NetMethods' expense, said Jones, attorney for plaintiffs Southern Electronics and Active Solutions, though he would not divulge the number of trips or the destinations. The two companies are suing the city and other contractors for what they claim were unfair labor practices in the handling of the city's crime cameras.

"They were destinations that didn't look like places New Orleans would have any business in, " he said.

We might be able to figure some of those out.

1. How about November, 2005?

Link!

Then Mayor Nagin took a trip to Jamaica, a place he called "the first place we are looking to rebuild and strengthen relationships" after Katrina.

2. How about November, 2007?

Link!

Then, Mayor Nagin skipped a critical budget hearing because he was rumored to again be on the beaches of Jamaica. Nagin spokeswoman Ceeon Quiett would neither confirm nor deny those charges, which originated when (former?) Nagin confidant and former Republican legislator Gary Forster mentioned it on his radio show.

-

I'd be willing to bet a few bucks that both of those were NetMethods-financed trips.

What others come to mind?

Sometimes They Paid

The other times they paid him to pay.

E-maelstrom: Double Vision

Given my apparent famousness, it should be obvious to readers that I'm pretty much constantly having fancy orgy cocaine parties with other talented celebrities. We do drugs you've never even heard of, drugs that aren't even named until we name them. One thing that's really hot on the scene - excuse me - was hot on the scene, was something we called human ecstaopiajuana, which required a willing female to donate her body for use as something best described as a soft bong. Where on earth do we find these girls?

--

Back on April 6th, parts of former Chief Technology Officer and Deputy Mayor Greg Meffert's deposition in a civil suit related to stolen crime camera technology began to leak. I picked up on one new disclosure rather quickly, Mr. Meffert's admission that he'd let city vendors pay for his excursions to Visions, a gentleman's club known for its 2683 Myspace friends.

Specifically, Meffert said, "sometimes they'd pay."

--

Meffert and me, we're a different kind of famous.

He borrows his friend's Ponchartrain yacht for a party with the Mayor.

I, on the other hand, own my own yacht.

In space.

Gregory Meffert might have thought he was the cock of the walk getting to go out to Visions using "OPM," otherwise known as "Other People's Money" or the Vince Fumo Memorial Payment Plan.

But real celebrities, we don't go to Visions.

Visions comes to us.

--

I was sitting outside eating breakfast and recovering from one of my fancy sexy space-yacht parties over this past weekend when up walks this nice young lady who seemed determined to sit nearby. No complaints. It always feels good when blonds feel compelled to bask in my aura.

But when she decided to strike up an unprovoked conversation about the high price of mangoes in the Greater New Orleans area compared to the Austin market while I was so clearly busy looking for pictures of myself in Rolling Stone magazine, I became a little annoyed.

How do I get out of this conversation?

She uncrossed her legs to get up, "I have to go home to get ready for work."

Problem solved!

"I'm sorry to hear that, where do you work?"

"Visions on the East Bank."

At this point, the biggest, dumbest smile imaginable took over control of my face.

Visions on the East Bank

"You guys out there have done us a great service."

She made me explain at this point, after which she got defensive because I think she took away from my abridged summary that I was saying that Visions was somewhat at fault.

"Strip clubs get a bad rap."

"I agree. That's not what I meant."

Pause

"So do you know anybody named... eh never mind."

--

Mr. Meffert said "sometimes they'd pay."

Who paid all the other times?

I think we could find out pretty soon.

--

In other news, yesterday Mayor Ray Nagin was deposed in that same civil suit over stolen crime camera technology. I actually don't expect too much scandalous stuff to come out when the transcripts are released to the public. I imagine that lawyers for the plaintiffs will explore more than just the trips to Chicago and Hawaii - it won't just be stuff that's already been in the paper. But I don't think there will be anything earth-shattering.

I do think that we've now officially entered into some really bizarre legal territory that I hope someone can comment about.

Mayor Nagin has not yet retained private council. This has struck me as peculiar not because I'm assuming that Mayor Nagin is guilty of some criminal behavior, but because it seems inherent that there might be conflicts in terms of the interests of the Office of the Mayor compared to the interests of Mr. Ray Nagin. Bob Ellis is not Mayor Nagin's personal attorney. He's a city attorney.

And now that the city has taken legal action against Dell Inc., one of their own co-defendants in the crime camera civil case, it would appear that much more important for the Mayor to retain a separate criminal defense attorney. I mean, the City Attorney's office is simultaneously fighting charges with Dell while leveraging charges against Dell. I think that the T-P's Michelle Krupa asked about this in one of her most recent pieces but I can't find precisely where now that I'm trying to link to it... Michelle Krupa indicates that indeed that question was asked of Penya Moses-Fields in her article about the cross-suit.

Moses-Fields said Nagin's testimony Monday about the travels squares with what he has said previously and should dispel any notion that the mayor acted inappropriately. She added that Nagin was not a party to the conspiracy alleged by the plaintiffs and should be dropped as a defendant.

"It's very clear that the city believes that the mayor has done nothing wrong, " Moses-Fields said.

Responding to questions, Moses-Fields said neither she nor the mayor has received subpoenas from a federal grand jury investigating the crime camera program. She said she believes Nagin has no criminal exposure in the case and that he has not retained his own defense attorney; the city attorney's office will continue to represent him, she said.

--

One more thing to watch is the impending release of the City Council emails. Yesterday, a judge blocked their release after finding the action taken by the City Attorney's office to retract privileged information to have been "inadequate."

But that stuff is going to come out soon. Within a couple of weeks. I would advice you not be surprised if release of the Council emails was timed conveniently with the unsealing of Mayor Nagin's complete deposition transcript.

--

We're always receiving these improper gifts of coincidence in New Orleans.

Sometimes they pay. Sometimes we pay.

Backtracking

It's been very interesting to observe the way that the Times-Picayune and other traditional media have covered the unfolding E-Maelstrom. The focus has shifted away from the various email-specific issues involving Veronica White, City Council, and the Mayor's Office of Technology to a seemingly singular fixation on a Nagin family vacation to Hawaii that was funded by a contractor with ties to the MOT and to former Chief Technology Officer and Administrative Executive to the Mayor, Gregory Meffert.

Though American Zombie wrote about this improper trip back in 2006, the mainstream media only recently got the confirmation necessary to go to print with the allegation. Of course, the release of Greg Meffert's deposition from a related lawsuit confirms that in fact, the Nagin trip was financed by city contractor Mark St. Pierre.

But is taking a contractor-funded vacation so outrageous or uncharacteristic for a Louisiana politician? Someone following this peripherally might question why the T-P has it's top investigative reporters chasing down a story about $2000 vacation.

It's because this isn't about an unethical and possibly illegal vacation to Hawaii. Rather, this is about trying to establish the facts around what might prove to be an enormous criminal conspiracy at City Hall revolving around the Mayor's Office of Technology. When you start to add up the dollars that exchanged hands between the municipal government and the various contractors with ties to Mr. Meffert, Mr. St. Pierre, and their cronies, you're talking about tens of millions of dollars. Maybe hundreds of millions. It's years of a failed crime cameras, yes. But it's also years of a failed 311 system. It's customer service kiosks at City Hall. It's all sorts of various municipal websites. It's the no longer available city wi-fi service. It's all sorts of technology purchases. All of that stuff (and unfortunately more) is in question.

It's not just about tax dollars wasted, it's also about what would have instead been invested in more plentiful and efficient city services that weren't there when we've needed them the most.

The recent series of articles in the Times-Picayune, I presume, is laying the groundwork for future reporting detailing the scope of corruption. That's why it has seemed like many of the articles that they've published since the end of March haven't yet provided anything particularly earth-shattering. The T-P needs to reestablish a lot of the background data that many internet insiders already understood before they can credibly start publishing new revealing details.

Ray Nagin's media availability yesterday was remarkable because it seemed to lend credibility to the inquiry at hand. Last week, Ray Nagin offhandedly dismissed reporter questions about the trip to Hawaii as a personal attack. This has been his typical response to most all tough questions about his record as Mayor. We know the tone well. Yesterday, however, Mayor Nagin's answers were delivered with a slight touch of basic humility that I thought was noticeable and notable, particularly when questions turned to his own low approval ratings, etc. (some video here, more detailed description here).

Certainly, he continued to deny any wrongdoing in the Hawaii matter and had his own interpretation of the approval ratings that absolve him of any real responsibility for anything, but the fact that he held stood outside of City Hall and held a question and answer session with the press indicates that the facts and allegations swirling around his administration can no longer be avoided and/or defiantly cast as a media conspiracy against him. I think that there is some implicit acknowledgment that the Mayor is in trouble - that this isn't just a game.


UPDATE: Here's full video of Nagin's media availability from yesterday afternoon. On seeing it in entirety, I think I was basically right; there's a little more furrow to his brow. He's taking this a little bit more seriously than he seemed to last week.

Mayor Ray Nagin Addresses Ethics Questions

UPDATE II:

It's also quite hilarious that Mayor Nagin decided to give Jim Letten unsolicited advice about how to select a jury. What would he need a jury for Ray?

Deposition Depot (updated)

I spent too much time yesterday trying to figure out how to upload large deposition files to blogger. Thankfully, WDSU has done a lot of that work for me. They have large portions of Greg Meffert's deposition online and available.

These links are to 'dsu's pdf downloads...

Pages 1-100 are here.
Pages 101-200 are here.
Pages 201-332 are here.

There are other loose bits floating around. As I'm able to corral them in a linkable fashion, I'll be aggregating them here on this post so that everything's all in one place.

And if you find something interesting reading through the deposition, please do drop us a line at WCBF.

Also, if you'd like to sneakily print out a big copy for me on your giant office machine, I will totally not reimburse your company. But I will buy you a beer. Deposition kegger anyone?

UPDATE: Meffert's lawyers have dropped their attempt to reseal the deposition. It is now all completely public and should be available for our reading pleasure shortly.

UPDATE 04/08:

When I started this blog, I always dreamed I'd get reader comments like this:

It's 3:55am and I just completed reading each pdf and started looking for the 1000 page download because I'm a masochist. Summary and observations following.

You have to hand it to the attorney, those suckers can drum on you forever until you're about ready to admit to whatever they want to hear.

In these downloads every once in awhile Greg would have several clever comebacks and really get under the attorneys skin - the comment about the refrigerator was priceless; Greg's a scumball but even I have to admit that was funny.

In short, Greg came off at best as utterly incompetent. He tried to push the image of that he was so overworked and got 300 emails a day I don't remember these things, etc.

The attorney really raked him over the coals of his website reporting his accomplishments with the cameras and made him admit it was BS.

The attorney did try to trap him multiple times into having him explain what other people thought/meant/said without him being there - this didn't work out for the attorney very well.

Greg needs to learn to pause for his attorneys to object, he was far to fast with his answers which I could see him getting himself into further trouble.

As far as Gregs skills as a manager in IT, let me explain no one is this friggin clueless. Greg also shows in several instances he understand budgets, he understands some key technology aspects, etc. But this was one of his pet projects, no one in his position wouldn't brush themselves up on these things due to the cost, the questions they would get asked and the eventual notoriety if it worked.

He practically admitted to writing the RFP for the original vendor of the cameras, which is not a best practice and then for him not to have an email trail about modifications to the RFP and those that need to sign off on the RFP like the City Attorney and other approving authorities/stakeholders for that kind of money and cross department initiative, is ridiculous.

Meffert is using the same old tired politician game, I don't know, I don't recall, I didn't read the entire email, etc. He did have some good counter points about Drake and the budgets, I have my team provide the same info and it has nothing to do with budgets, the are just giving me projections.

There is alot he is hiding, that is for sure and you can tell that by the timing of the contract and the players involved.

Full disclosure: I knew Chris Drake and others at the City Hall IT dept personally during this period and Chris is a heck of a guy. I can assure you Chris was at best a pawn which pretty much is proven in the depo - Chris did what he was told, he's not the brains behind this - that would be Meffert and St. Pierre.

Good stuff. There's nothing like combing through depositions at 4 in the morning... Jury is still out on Mr. Drake though. We'll see how things turn up. It does look to me like Meffert was one of the kingpins, but then again, that's who they were deposing so of course questions are going to be geared toward illuminating his role.

Visions

Man oh man. I'm starting to collect bits and pieces of Greg Meffert's deposition in the ongoing lawsuit at Orleans Civil District Court , which was released today. The T-P now has confirmation that City Contractor Netmethods, owned by Mark St. Pierre, paid for a Nagin family vacation to Hawaii. They've also posted a bit of the deposition. I'm going to put as much of the deposition online as I can over the course of the day during my free time.

But the part available from nola.com in the link above, I thought everyone might like this line of questioning where Meffert basically cops to getting an unknown number of strip club adventures picked up by the Imagine tab.




"Sometimes they'd pay."

It's all part of the e-maelstrom. A nice wink toward Mr. Gordon Russell and Mr. Frank Donze for this line in today's writeup about the deposition release:

The new court filing raises new questions about the already-controversial business dealings between the city and its technology vendors, dealings that have attracted keen interest from federal investigators. The motion also brings Nagin deeper into the maelstrom, which so far has mainly swirled around St. Pierre and Meffert, one of the mayor's top aides and most trusted advisers until he left City Hall in 2006.

I'll take it! Yes!

UPDATE: A recently married man found the myspace page for Visions. Might be a good place for Rising Tide IV.

E-maelstrom Unravels Hawaii Trip

The Times-Picayune sent three reporters to chase down a story American Zombie broke for us way back in 2006.

Now that's to congratulate Dambala, not to disparage Donze, Hammer, and Russell who wrote a must-read with audio of Nagin's bob-and-weave. Read all of it and then read behind it at AZ.

Once again....if anyone with the power to do so is listening...subpoena Imagine's credit card records.

That's Jim Letten's call I guess.

The key to the next door as far as public information is concerned is probably what's going on at Orleans Parish Civil District Court. Again, the T-P describes it very well.

We'll know so much more if Judge Rosemary Ledet unseals that deposition on Monday.

We're gonna get there.

There is no escaping the E-Maelstrom

Well some 'lost' emails have apparently made their way to the press.

Gordon Russell stirs the seas:

A review of Meffert's e-mails from his last year at City Hall casts further doubt on his record. The correspondence shows that he was deeply enmeshed in the business dealings of a group of former associates at the same time he steered multimillion-dollar, no-bid city contracts, including the camera deals, to companies they owned.

Meffert's exact role in the companies remains unclear, but the e-mails show that he often participated in and directed decisions that had nothing to do with the firms' work in New Orleans. And he traveled with company members to drum up business in other cities, including Baton Rouge, Houston and Chicago, using his public position to open doors.

Do not miss this article. It will only continue to unravel from here.

Certainly takes all of the innuendo out of this WWL piece from yesterday, though I'm sure you didn't have much trouble making the connection yourself.

Meffert is already speaking through an attorney who promises that his client will be completely vindicated, which I think is some fancy lawyerin' mumbo jumbo signifying something no better than a plea deal with an agreement to testify.

**UPDATE: Clancy has confirmed that in fact, the feds have already had a little sit down with Meffert. The visit was "threatening" and "ugly," and Meffert is "scared."

This is what it's all about. The White to Washington leak of Council emails opened an entry path for the feds to do more work around the IT dept but never was the primary focus, though there will probably be some fallout on that front as well.

E-maelstrom

Okay guys, that's the name of this scandal, at least as WCBF is concerned. I need something to tag these posts with and I just can't wait around anymore for the proper democratic process to provide a better idea. It's all happening too fast. So there you have it: E-maelstrom.

I think that's pretty good. It describes the email controversy AND the larger scandal-sucking vortex that the email controversy seems to be precipitating, which is what I'll be discussing at length in this post.

Fair?

Fair.

Many of us have been on the edge of their seats as confirmed and rumored reports of Federal raids and computer seizures have proliferated between City Hall whisperers and blogging interneters.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate known fact from unconfirmed report and reasonable speculation from straw grasp.

I won't promise to do that here but I will attempt to express a little bit of what I know, what I want to know, and what I expect to know.

If you've been reading the blogs this week, there's a certain difference between what has been discussed online and what has been good enough to print in the mainstream press. WWL, WDSU, the Times-Picayune, and the like aren't totally missing the boat. I think they're wise to be cautious. Certainly the Mayor's people are anxious to find bad reporting on which they can capitalize to obfuscate what's really going on.

But us web operators can help make up for whatever analytical boldness might be lacking in the mainstream press during these early public stages of what is clearly a very complicated scandal.

Mr. Clancy DuBos is straddling those two worlds quite nicely and has been a great read lately, particularly his coverage and analysis of Judge Ledet's court and the legal angle of the Council email leak element of this. In fact, his superb post today is the impetus behind my post now.

One thing we're all seeming to be in agreement about is that this is only partially about the 'unusual' leak of City Council's emails to Attorney Tracie Washington and the Louisiana Justice Institute.

Briefly for the uninitiated, Tracie Washington went around City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields and the normal protocol for a public records request by submitting a request for three years worth of Council's emails through Sanitation Director Veronica White. This occurred in early December, just hours after WWL's Lee Zurik submitted a request through the City Attorney for a year's worth of emails and calendar appointments from the Mayor. That request remains unfulfilled after the Mayor's office claimed that the emails had been lost or inadvertently deleted, though it is important to point out that city policy mandates that emails are backed up on a remote server every three months.

This was also amidst a political storm around Veronica White, who was clashing with Council over poorly kept records and her department's 2009 budget.

The Nagin administration and those associated with Washington's Louisiana Justice Institute have been couching the release of Council's emails as unorthodox and unusual but totally above board. Beyond that, they've described the controversy around the release of the emails as exposing the hypocrisy of Council's repeated calls for transparency from the Mayor's office.

In truth, there is no love lost between LJI and the Mayor's office. Washington has habitually expressed her distaste for Mr. Nagin and his destructive policies. But on this matter, the early noise in the press was pretty similar.

So why is it such a big deal that Council's emails were released anyway?

Well, if the records request had been fulfilled following proper procedures, nothing would have been wrong with it. We all have a right to see what our public officials have been doing with their time. However, because the disclosure of records was done without the knowledge of Council or Council's attorney, there could be any number of things released to the public that would have otherwise been redacted, and for good reason.

Email correspondence with federal law enforcement, email correspondence about federal investigations, email correspondence with whistle-blowers should be protected from public release because of the possibility of criminal obstruction of justice.

And as Clancy points out, there was likely correspondence between Council and Council attorney's about a lawsuit AGAINST the Mayor and City Attorney:

Why did Moses-Fields meet with Hatfield and Boyd to discuss how to protect privileged information? In fact, why did Moses-Fields get involved at this or any other point in a request for City Council records — particularly when she knew full well that the council has its own independent legal counsel? Moreover, she knew at the time that the reason the council hired its own lawyers is because it was considering litigation against Moses-Fields and her client, the mayor. Moses-Fields obviously knew or should have known that some of the council emails would contain attorney-client communications, which are privileged, and she also knew damn well that she had no right — and no authority — whatsoever to review or even to see those privileged communications, particularly when she is legally adverse to the parties and the attorneys who are engaged in those communications.

So there may be criminal activity involving the release of the emails at a number of contact points. Certainly a bigger issue would be that the Mayor's Office of Technology has direct 24/7 access to Council's email files. This seems like a huge breach of basic municipal separation of power and opens a lot of troubling doors. I can confirm from knowledgeable sources that many members of Council and Council staff have operated as though their emails were tapped and being read by the Mayor's people for some time. I can't accurately say if that means three months, six months, or twelve months but my best guess is that this has been going on for longer than the time line of the e-maelstrom scandal.

Yet, one wonders whether Councilors were as careful with their words one would think they'd be knowing that their correspondence was being read - given the excitement one can infer on LJI's end about the bounty of information that could be in those emails related to the demolition of public housing, the LSU/VA site selection process, or whatever other nefarious words or dirty deeds could have conceivably been discussed via email.

Nevertheless, it would appear to me that even in isolation of some of the other issues I'll get to in this post, the release of Council's emails by the Office of Technology and the Sanitation Director represents more than a procedural anomaly. Criminal behavior seems a very likely possibility.

Let's take a look at some of the players on the email leak side of things and see where that takes us in terms of the larger scandals to which we've been alluding...


1. City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields

Clancy's analysis seems pretty clear:

The law is crystal clear on this: attorneys who come into possession of adverse parties’ documents or communications that may be privileged have an ethical duty to notify the attorneys for those parties immediately — and to avoid opening, reviewing or otherwise violating the privileges that attach to those documents or communications. So, why exactly did Moses-Fields admit to an intent to review (and perhaps actually review) emails that she absolutely knew contained privileged information and/or communications between an adverse party (the council) and that party’s attorneys? [snip]

Why did it take Moses-Fields, by her own admission, two weeks to notify the council’s attorneys that a public records request had been filed for documents that probably contained privileged communications between the council and its attorneys? What was she thinking? Or better yet, what was she reading?

Beyond that, Moses-Fields has already given a sworn deposition on the matter that is extremely vague but still exposes certain vulnerabilities depending on how facts play out. Either way, it is probably reasonable to speculate that Penya Moses-Fields could find herself in much hotter water than she's been in to date.


2. Louisiana Justice Institute Attorney Tracie Washington

City Council's own attorney Steven Lane has seemingly, on a few different occasions, largely exonerated Ms. Washington in terms of her role in acquiring the emails from Sanitation Director White. However, Washington has indicated in interviews that she's proliferated some of the emails to unknown people or groups that have asked for them. I'm not a lawyer but it would appear to me that she exposes herself to a certain degree depending on the parties to whom she passed on the emails and depending on whether she bares any legal responsibility for the content in the emails, whether she's read them or not.

The other issue for LJI involves optical perception. The narrative of events also lends to questions related to Washington's awareness of White's pull in the Mayor's Office of Technology. Washington's past willingness to get involved in Bill Jefferson's legal defense and other similar efforts has seemed to undermine her credibility on this issue as an impartial seeker of public records, even amongst some regular allies. On the other hand, Jay Arena has started a petition on her behalf that has seen low traffic but has yielded some high impact signatories, such as former Mayor Marc Morial and Color of Change's James Rucker.

(I don't think anybody is disputing Washington or anyone else's right to see Council's emails but the petition text seems to consider some of these legal issues to be totally without merit or implicitly directed at Washington herself, which makes no sense given that Council's attorney Steven Lane has repeatedly reiterated the legitimacy of Washington's request and has not alleged wrongdoing on her part that I'm aware of. In short, and as someone that has supported a lot of Washington's work around social justice issues and who has tried to understand the argument coming from the LJI side, I think that the communications strategy at work here is absolutely ludicrous given the legal nuance and the emerging federal criminal investigation. I also, however, would like the legitimate public information within Council emails pertaining to actual important stuff - like the LSU/VA site selection process - to be released as soon as possible.)


3. Sanitation Director Veronica White

White has drawn the brunt of the legal activity related to this case so far, as it has been confirmed that federal agents have seized her computers. White has retained the services of a high profile criminal defense attorney and the Nagin administration has not been as publicly protective of her as they usually are for employees that have come under fire in the past, including White herself on a number of previous occasions.

Given the tenuous political situation in which she found herself back in early December, many are suspicious that she maliciously circumvented municipal protocol and potentially broke the law in order to prematurely leak these emails as a result of her professional troubles with Council and personal troubles with Councilwoman Stacy Head in particular.

A couple of related unanswered questions:

(a) Did White communicate to Washington that she would be willing and able to expedite a public records request pertaining to Council's emails and how?

(b) Did White see any email content? [Especially important given that much of the most recent correspondence included was likely to pertain to her own performance as Sanitation Director]

(d) Who else was aware of the request and when? [Did White collude with other administration officials in the Mayor's Office of Technology or elsewhere in the administration to expedite the records request or view the data herself?]

Another issue for White, is an emerging investigation into a bodyguard assigned to her who has ended up aiding a recall movement against White's enemy Councilwoman Stacy Head. From my view, this is tangential. It's not totally irrelevant but doesn't necessarily appear to have much bearing on some of the other elements under consideration.


4. Chief Administrative Officer Dr. Brenda Hatfield


Dr. Hatfield essentially acts as the Mayor's Chief of Staff and is heavily involved in every function of the executive branch. She was present at many of the meetings about the Council email release and will likely have to corroborate the testimony already provided by Moses-Fields and otherwise disclose what she knew and when. The Mayor has delegated the responsibility of investigating the matter and recommending disciplinary action in this matter to Hatfield but it isn't entirely clear that Hatfield herself might be deserving of reprimand for, at the very least, being totally unaware of what was occurring between White and the Mayor's Office of Technology over a two month period.

She's certainly going to be asked what she knew and when she knew it. The known details of her involvement remain sketchy at best.


5. Interim Chief Technology Officer M. Harrison Boyd

In the deposition(pdf) given under oath by Penya Moses-Fields, it was on February 28th that someone from the Mayor's Office of Technology finally came forward to disclose that Council's emails had already been placed on CDs and released to Tracie Washington.

8. On February 28, 2009, the Director of the Mayor's Office of Technology informed the City Attorney's Office that at some point in time prior to February 28, 2009, he had provided Veronica White with one set of discs containing emails of the City Council.

It has been assumed that this is a reference to M. Harrison Boyd and this has been repeated in accounts in the mainstream press. I'd like to know if in fact anyone has explicitly confirmed that it was Boyd who produced the emails on discs to White.

The reason I'm skeptical is that it seems extremely counter-intuitive that Boyd, a recent hire from out of state, would knowingly take part in such blatantly legally ambiguous activity involving the emails of a separate branch of government.

Assuming that he was in fact responsible for obtaining Council's emails from the server, putting them on a disc, and handing that disc to White, well then he's going to be in some serious hot water. Some questions related to this scenario:

(a) Why weren't White's request for records on behalf of Washington greeted with skepticism?
(b) Were their orders to produce the emails from elsewhere in the administration?

However, I wonder whether the deposition refers to someone else entirely from the MOT, or if Boyd was holding himself accountable for the actions of another staffer within his department.

And that brings us to...


6. Former Chief Technology Officer and current Management Information Services Enterprise Director Anthony Jones

Now we're cutting closer to the heart of the matter.

It is believed, though it has not been confirmed by the mainstream press, that Jones' computers have also been seized by federal agents. Now, this could be because Jones was in fact responsible for the release of Council's emails, not Boyd as implied by the deposition of City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields. But it likely has a lot more to do with Jones' illegal activities during his time as CTO from 2007-2008. Both the Inspector General and a separate auditor contracted by the city have issued reports highly critical of Jones' conduct around the award of contracts related to the city's crime camera program.

From the Times-Picayune's David Hammer:

Last week, when the city's independent inspector general alleged years of questionable contracting and $4 million in overpayments for an often-inoperable network of crime cameras, Mayor Ray Nagin's administration released its own audit of the camera program. It focused almost entirely on the last two years of the project, when Jones was interim chief technology officer.

The most troubling findings by PFM Group of Philadelphia were that Jones filed false invoices to hide the camera project's costs, and accepted plane tickets to a conference in Colorado from a contractor that earned millions on the camera project in a no-bid arrangement. The report called those actions, which Jones denies, "potential misconduct and unlawful activity" and recommended that the city inform law enforcement.

Jones was demoted in August, mainly because he had falsely claimed to have a college degree. He also overstated the number of college credits he earned on at least one job application.

Jones is almost certainly going to be charged with several crimes, that is, unless he agrees to testify against others. What others?

That the Mayor's audit focused only on Jones' administration of the MOT and crime camera program is indeed quite telling.


7. Mark Kurt, Former Chief Technology Officer
8. Greg Meffert, Former Chief Technology Officer

Greg Meffert was a huge donor to both of Ray Nagin's mayoral campaigns and served as CTO and as something of a Deputy Mayor from 2002-2006. Kurt was a private sector associate of Meffert, was brought in by Meffert to serve in the MOT, and was subsequently named as Meffert's successor. The two gentleman, along with other private sector associates, are involved in a tangled web of insider contracting involving all aspects of the city's push to modernize technology and information systems under Ray Nagin. Blogger Ashe Dambala from American Zombie has cultivated a number of knowledgeable sources and has systematically broken down the graft starting in the summer of 2006 with the publication of a story detailing some of the contract trading and the existence of a corporate yacht owned by Meffert associates and enjoyed by the Mayor himself. He stayed on the issue through 2007 as the crime camera program was expanded and his breakdown of the IG's recent report helps illuminate the systemic corruption in the Mayor's Office of Technology.

Some areas in which contracts were handed out between associates of Meffert and Kurt involve the design and maintenance of several city websites - including the tax assessor's database and cityofno.com; the design, implementation, and maintenance of the city's short-lived wifi service; the design, implementation, and maintenance of the city's maligned 311 call system; installing and maintaining the crime camera system; maintaining city email servers across all departments including City Council; and much more.

The city contracts, which bilked the city out of tens millions of dollars or much more, provided affiliated individuals and corporations a spring board to national prominence and untold wealth.

Scariest is what we might find once investigations begin to reveal the lengths to which cronies went, not just to conceal their crimes, but first and especially to maintain the power necessary to continue to wring the city of every last penny though various no-bid and bid-rigged contracts. What we do find, we'll find first on American Zombie, so make sure to bookmark him.


9. The Honorable C. Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans


Ray Nagin and Greg Meffert are neighbors on Park Island, an exclusive and obscure cul-de-sac off of City Park.


View Larger Map

Meffert and various associates from the city's fledgling IT community bankrolled Nagin's campaign in 2002 and his reelection in 2006 with tens of thousands of dollars in contributions.

The chief target of the federal investigation must ultimately Mr. Nagin. It has been reported on AZ but unconfirmed by the mainstream press that the Mayor's computers have also been seized by federal agents.

The ultimate legitimacy of all of these investigations and possible seizures will rest on whether or not US Attorney Jim Letten is able to gather enough evidence of collusion/conspiracy between the Mayor, Meffert, and Meffert's associates to file charges that stick. Thus, all the interest in the Mayor's email archives.

--

What is increasingly clear is that there is else behind the swift action by federal investigators in regard to the release of Council emails, something else that has is only tangentially related to this one procedural miscue by the administration.

(Though it does seem like there may be criminal activity involved with it specifically, possibly on a number of levels.)

Rather - and I this most certainly isn't the first time I, Clancy, Oyster, or Zombie have made this point - the council email release controversy is a convenient pretext to fast track an ongoing and incredibly grave longer-term investigation into the overall politicization and corruption of the Mayor's Office of Technology.

Perhaps more consequential in the most immediate short term is what this e-maelstrom means in terms of the operation of municipal government. Where there was once a high-tension environment toxic to coalition building, now it is probable that there is only totally demoralized gridlock. Even now, though the e-maelstrom has only begun to escalate, it is simply impossible to imagine Council being able to do anything in concert with the Mayor's office.

Free For All

This ish is out of control.

Selectively Understood

The Feds have selected Veronica White's computers for seizure to better their own understanding.

A Grand Jury has been convened.

*And Big Red Cotton reports that Veronica White has been Defense Attorney shopping.

The White-t0-Washington email leak has turned out to be quite the catalyst for solving some of our other favorite mysteries.

I doubt this is so much about leaked emails as it is about, well, so many other horrible things.

Hats off to the American Zombie ten times over.

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It's not going to stop. I wouldn't look away.

I'll certainly have more to add soon 'nuff.

WTF?!?

So much is happening in the world of municipal politics this week it's hard to keep track of it all.

We've got HANO whistle blowers coming forward in advance of new HUD chief Shaun Donovan's visit.

New DHS Chief Janet Napolitano also comes to town for the first time this week as new allegations swirl around the New Orleans FEMA office.

The Office of the Inspector General has released its report on the perpetually wasteful crime camera program and criminal prosecutions seem likely.

Then there is this email clusterf#ck.

WWL has been suing the city for access to public records that the Office of Technology says were deleted, while simultaneously our old friend Sanitation Director Veronica White was somehow granted access to the City Council's email archives, which she promptly turned over (without checking for privileged material potentially related to ongoing lawsuits against the city or FBI investigations) to civil rights attorney Tracie Washington. City Attorney Penya Moses-Fields claims to have been unaware of this until last week, after the emails had been delivered to Washington.

White is on vacation somewhere.

Talk about inside baseball! There are many layers to this onion.

And these last few items, as Oyster says, are probably related.

Helluva week, huh?

Please submit your theories as to how the email kerfuffle went down. What do you think happens next? Do you believe that Moses-Fields didn't know? Is Veronica White going to be held accountable? Or do they circle the wagons once again? What's the most sensitive item hidden in those emails? I know I'd love to take a look for myself.

Transparency, right?

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I know Tracie Washington is probably going to take some heat for only requesting emails from the white members of City Council. But let's put this in context. Only three Councilors actually answer emails anyway. So the real question is what the hell she possibly hoped to get out of Jackie Clarkson's virgin email account. Jackie has always struck me as a rotary phone kind of gal.