Big gun

LaToya hired a lawyer.

An attorney for New Orleans Mayor-elect LaToya Cantrell is fighting a bid by Attorney General Jeff Landry's office to recuse all 12 judges of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court from its investigation into her credit-card activity as a councilwoman.

Cantrell has hired a legal heavy hitter, attorney Billy Gibbens, a former federal prosecutor who has defended several high-profile criminal defendants and government targets.

Which is fine. I mean, the state Attorney General is going after her in what is, for him, an obvious attempt to score political points around Louisiana by harassing the Mayor-Elect of  New Orleans over corruption allegations.  Landry is basically already running for Governor and this stunt certainly doesn't figure to hurt his chances. Grace points out in this column that by jumping the gun on a concurrent legislative auditor's investigation, Landry might actually screw it all up. That would be unfortunate and amusing in equal parts.

At the same time, somebody should probably be looking into the entitled ways in which the city's political leadership throws around public money. Like we said during the campaign, it's unfortunate the way the credit card story was reduced to a cheap political attack. But that doesn't mean it's not worth pursuing. There's a tight circle of developers, non-profit socialites, and financiers who presume to run things in New Orleans. This looks like a story that might tie into that.

Anyway, the money club faction is riding pretty high having just installed Cantrell as the next mayor.  So we're pretty okay with watching them squirm now.  It would be nice if Landry would butt out of the process, but I guess we can't have everything.
 
But here's the thing.  Cantrell hired a big time lawyer.

Cantrell is only the latest big name on Gibbens' client list. That roster also has included Darren Sharper, the former Saints safety and admitted serial rapist; Robert Durst, the New York real estate heir and reality TV celebrity murder suspect; and local trash magnate Fred Heebe.

Led by Gibbens, Heebe's aggressive counter-attack while in the crosshairs of the FBI included exposing the notorious online posting scandal inside former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten's office.

It could be that's overkill.  Even if she doesn't think there's anything to the investigation, the stakes are pretty high when you are the Mayor-Elect so it's a good idea not to take anything for granted.  On the other hand, that's a big gun hire. Maybe there's something else to it.