Gov. Jeff Landry has a problem with New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno. He also has a problem with Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams. The same is true of Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill. Together, they’ve decided that they aren’t talking to New Orleans’ top leadership, primarily because they strongly disliked the indictment of Murrill, and they’re convinced that Moreno, Williams and others put a grand jury up to doing something that perhaps even they didn’t know they could do.
This needs to stop, and I have a tiptoe way forward.
This all goes back to early July, just before a usually slow time for some and a Black cultural explosion at the Essence Festival of Culture for others. There had been whispers about some high-profile elected officials visiting the Orleans Parish courthouse, and not for jury duty or a trial. Each of them was going into the same courtroom. Then, on July 2, a grand jury indicted the AG with eight counts of malfeasance and eight counts of intimidation.
Until July, not many knew that grand jurors can suggest an indictment, conduct an investigation and then indict someone…