Hoist up the Sloop St. P

Assuming this story is real info that is CORRECT, of course.

Sources close to St. Pierre and the Nagin probe tell us the former technology firm owner hopes to get his sentence reduced in exchange for testimony against the ex-mayor. If St. Pierre is really willing to admit his crimes, he could have key information about trips, parties and home care he provided for Nagin.

Documents and testimony at St. Pierre's trial showed he provided a yacht for a Nagin campaign party, yard work at Nagin's house and a credit card tha Meffert charged to fly Nagin and his family on exotic vacations to Hawaii and Jamaica and on a campaign trip to Chicago. In Chicago, St. Pierre hosted a campaign party and raised money for Nagin’s reelection.

This investigation continues

Here's where I think it gets interesting.

The rumor about town is that Flanagan's legal fees were actually paid for by Dell and I will address that issue in a subsequent post on Humid Beings. It's apt because Sir Flanagan invoked Dell right out of the gate. He tried to convince the jury that St. Pierre couldn't have been doing anything all that illegal if he was working with this fine, upstanding, national mega-corp., Dell Computers. He also noted that the business practices which Dell conducts in the state of Louisiana, with Veracent as a sub, were a "standard way of doing business" in any state.

This was in reference to the loop Veracent/St. Pierre had created where they would build the cameras, ship them to Dell and Dell would in turn sell them back to the Louisiana municipalities through their state contractor's license.

Flanagan's claim that this process is standard for Dell is absolutely, positively, not-fucking-true. I will merely invoke the name Kim Fury Jennings and let you dig back in the catacombs of AZ. More will come in the HB post.

Much more here. And I assume more forthcoming at Humid Beings.

Eventually this could end up being all about Dell, and not just in regard to dealings in New Orleans.

The part where Clancy tells us what it all means

It's kind of like the end of a Harry Potter novel. Only Clancy isn't a wise old homosexual man in a long purple robe and nobody gets any chocolate frogs. But we live in Chocolate City already so I guess we can overlook that. Oh and that thing we learn at the end is something we knew throughout the whole story anyway.

Lesson No. 1 — Don’t try to run government like a business. This is a lesson for us all. Businesses are dictatorships; our government is a democracy. The two are not designed to work the same way. The next time you hear some puffed-up businessman saying we should run government like a business, remind him that Greg Meffert and Mark St. Pierre were successful businessmen — and ask him if he likes how they ran things. If nothing else, we now know the danger — and the folly — of running government like a business.

Adding: Of course this is far from the end of the story. It's like splitting the novel into separate movies or something.

Perhaps they will find him adorably charming

Twitter has been telling me the St. Pierre jury is ready with a verdict for the past 45 minutes now. Still waiting.

Update:Guilty. All 53 counts

Smirking thugs

In mid-2006, when the American Zombie blog began the questions about St. Pierre's use of a yacht for parties for Meffert and Meffert's access to a corporate credit card, St. Pierre had the blogger investigated. An email presented by prosecutors showed that St. Pierre found out the then-anonymous blogger's name, Jason Berry, as well as the names of his wife and children.

"The only thing we don't know is his address and social security number," St. Pierre bragged to his friends via email.

Berry was in the courtroom watching as his family information was displayed on a screen for the jurors. He said he received anonymous threats on the subject before, but seeing it in court took it to a new level.

"It's still scary," Berry said in an interview outside the courtroom. "It didn't hit me until I saw my childrens' names and my wife's name on the screen."

Click the smirk for the rest.

Update: More for Slabbed

Speaking of value, the Hammerman also reveals something that is important to a newspaper reporter circa 2011 as he took a shot at Jason’s reporting near the end of his piece. Never mind that American Zombie was literally months ahead of the traditional media on this but he evidently got a minor detail in grand the scheme of things wrong in his cutting edge reporting on Meffert, the credit card and the sex yacht. IMHO it is a clear signal of the type of mindset that guarantees the continued evolution of the print media in a way the Hammerman evidently dreads. I think Noladishu said it best for those of us on the new media side of things via twitter:

# of bloggers threatened by St. P: 1. # of TP reporters threatened:0. Badge of honor, there.

In addition, there's the obvious contradiction in the fact that although St. Pierre was snooping into Berry's personal life, he takes offense that anyone would be similarly curious about just who that "Tammy" person was.

"I'm not sure why she used the name 'Tammy' but she didn't want people to know she was my wife.... Is that against the law? A lot of people do it," St. Pierre testified.

Prosecutor Matthew Coman asked if St. Pierre tried to stop his wife.

"There was no reason to stop her; it was all about getting the truth out," St. Pierre said.

"The truth?" Coman shot back. "She gave a fake name!"

"Who doesn't call the radio and doesn't want to be known?" St. Pierre responded.

What does the law say about intent to bribe?

From Mark St.Pierre's testimony.

"In open areas of the yacht there was dancing (by the strippers)," St. Pierre testified. "Unfortunately, I did participate in that. I'm sorry I did it. I've apologized to my wife. We took things too far. We got out of control.

"It was not a good time in my life and I'm sorry for it, but I'll tell you this: It was never meant as a kickback or a bribe for anybody."

Update: The rest of this amounts to a game of "What did the lawyers know and when did they know it?" Although maybe a good rule of thumb would be, if you have to hire a big law firm and ask them if what you're doing in illegal, you're probably doing something illegal. This is particularly true if part of what you're doing involves paying for sex acts on a boat.

I'm going to ask my doctor if I can eat 20 bacon donuts a day for six months and not have a heart attack. The doctor might say, "It's possible." Can I sue for malpractice?

Upperdate: Starting to believe those who say the government's real target in all of this is Ciber.

Ciber's president for state and local contracts, Ed Burns, "asked me and (Imagine employee) Dwaine Hodges to go to San Francisco to assist them with their (bid)," St. Pierre testified. "I would have done that for Northrop Grumman. If any (Government Services Administration) vendor wanted facts I would have helped with the facts."

St. Pierre's NetMethods also got government contracts working under Ciber in other locations, such as Cook County, Ill., and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality in Jackson, Miss.

In fact, while the government alleges that money St. Pierre made from the city of New Orleans through Imagine was used to pay Meffert a first NetMethods check of $38,000 in October 2004, St. Pierre said that came from direct business NetMethods already had in Mississippi.

St. Pierre said that Meffert named NetMethods and they formed it as a way for the two friends to be in business together outside the city of New Orleans, even while Meffert was a city official.

"Ed Burns always considered us strategic partners," St. Pierre said. "To me, that meant I'll help you where I can and you help me wherever you can. We knew our future at the city would not be a long future. So our goal was to build our business outside of the city."

Don't forget Billboard Ben

This morning James Gill's column is titled "If only Ray Nagin had lost the New Orleans mayoral election in 2006" In it, he pins blame for the dumbfounding tragicomedy of the second Nagin administration on the Meffert-St. Pierre cohort and their willingness to raise campaign money under the table.

Hardly anything that Meffert, St. Pierre and their associates installed ever did work. They were billed as the young thrusters who would bring the city's antiquated IT systems up to whiz-bang standards. Meffert left City Hall several months after the 2006 election, while St. Pierre and his associates remained as contractors.

By the time Landrieu took over, we had not only malfunctioning crime cameras, but email systems that had insufficient storage space and regularly crashed. The financial tracking system had gone haywire. Records were still stored on an aged mainframe.

If only Nagin had lost that election in 2006, as, indeed, he feared he might. That's why he told Meffert to raise $250,000 pronto. Meffert then turned to St. Pierre, who kicked in $100,000 by handing cash to various minions who then each made a $5,000 contribution, the maximum allowed by law. The use of proxies to evade the limit is illegal, but St. Pierre isn't worried about such trivial infractions right now. He is in some serious soup.

So Gill's thesis is not without merit. But it's also incomplete. Meffert and St. Pierre weren't the only big contributors to the Nagin campaign that year to end up with legal difficulties.

Longtime S&WB member Benjamin Edwards sentenced to 21 years in kickback scheme
Published: Thursday, June 24, 2010

Initially a Nagin skeptic, Edwards became an ardent supporter, pumping $270,000 into Nagin's 2006 re-election -- roughly one-sixth of what the Nagin campaign itself spent. He was the board's longest-serving member at the time of his resignation.

In pleading guilty to wire fraud, Edwards acknowledged receiving part of a $63,279 payment made on Feb. 15, 2006, by a major Sewerage & Water Board contractor, MWH of Colorado, to Management Construction Consultant Inspection, which was secretly controlled by Bruce Edwards.

It's one thing to say, as Gill does, that a few corrupt bugs in the technology department can wreak a lot of havoc on a system. But it's appropriate once again to ask if those bugs were actually more of a feature.

Nomination

I'd like to put Times-Picayune photographer Ted Jackson's name out there for Pullitzer consideration this year. Every time NOLA.com runs this picture of Mark St. Pierre's smirk,



the reader knows the accompanying article is going to be hilarious.

Mark St. Pierre's former corporate lawyers advised him he may have broken the law by treating his boss at City Hall to entertainment on a yacht, purchased largely to host biweekly poker parties, replete with strippers. But even after doling out that sober advice, the same attorneys continued to try to find ways to help St. Pierre and the city official go into business together.

Also, as Oyster points out, this story also tangentially involves the Ashley award. It's a veritable prize mine.

"License to steal"

Just when you think the St. Pierre trial can't get any funnier, today we get this testimony from Greg Meffert and Mark St. Pierre's attorney Danny Drake.

Central to St. Pierre's defense is that he had a "reasonable reliance" on Drake's advice that what he was doing was legal. But the defense is no good if the advising lawyers don't have all of the relevant facts or if their advice isn't followed.

Referring to notes he took at the time, Drake said he wrote down that Meffert had used the credit card for $50.

Drake said he had no idea the card charges actually amounted to $130,000, or that St. Pierre had paid Meffert $38,000 in October 2004.

He also didn't know that Meffert had persuaded Nagin to issue an executive order exempting technology contracts from the city's bidding rules, at least not until prosecutor Matthew Coman showed it to him a few weeks ago.

"That's a license to steal," was Drake's shocked reaction.

In 2002, as Nagin was preparing to take office, T-P reporters Frank Donze and Gordon Russell wrote,

Listen to the small circle of friends and advisers that Nagin has drafted to help him assemble his administration, and you might think the age of techno-government is about to dawn in New Orleans.

Did it ever!

Whole new meaning to the name Silicon Bayou

Stephanie Grace tweets from the St. Pierre trial:

Meffert admits St Pierre bought yacht for him to use as "perk."Also paid for strippers who'd "perform sex acts" on the boat. Weekly.

Update: More from Meffert's testimony

But Meffert took the story a step further on Wednesday, saying the promise of a more permanent, larger contract was the "carrot" for Ciber to take the initial contract, in which they simply turned most of the money over to St. Pierre's company.

For that so-called "5.5 contract" -- so called because Ciber got to keep 5.5 percent as a management fee -- to be a permanent deal, it had to be offered through a competitive process. Meffert said he arranged for St. Pierre and Ciber to work together to come up with the requirements for bids, thus assuring that Ciber would win the work.

"So they were literally able to have the answers before the questions were even posted," Meffert explained. "It's not open and fair. This was done to make sure Ciber would win the contract."

Upperdate: But..um... yeah back to the strippers.

On Wednesday, Meffert told a federal jury of eight women and four men that St. Pierre, the defendant in the trial, paid for strippers to come to the yacht on a weekly basis and perform sex acts on Meffert, St. Pierre and some of the other City Hall technology team members who worked for St. Pierre.

"They would strip, take their clothes off during the poker games, and sometimes perform sex acts," Meffert said sheepishly. "On me and on everybody. (St. Pierre) paid for myself, himself and sometimes some key Imagine partners or whatever."

Meffert said St. Pierre would also finance Meffert's bets in poker games on the boat. He said there would be two games per trip, each with a $100 buy-in. He never had to pay for any of it, thanks to St. Pierre. Even if St. Pierre wasn't in attendance, he would have his friend, welder Jimmy Goodson, who later became Meffert's driver, pay for everything.

I like that David Hammer takes a moment to inform us of the number of women on the jury before going into the frat party stuff. Nice touch.

Note also Dambala has been saying for some time now that Ray Nagin took a few party cruises on the boat himself. Was he on any of these deluxe package trips? Must be one of "Katrina's Secrets"

"Big Jim"

More big fun at the St. Pierre trial. The testimony here is from an employee of St. Pierre named James "Big Jim" Goodson who, if his various responsibilities (bodyguard, driver, landscaper, bag man, pimp, maintenance specialist) are described accurately, can best be likened to a Bond villain's henchman. I think my favorite line is the one below in red.

The government showed the jury a paper trail of most of the payments on an overhead projector. Goodson testified that St. Pierre had him give $5,000 to Nagin's re-election effort in May 2006 and confirmed the payment was in the form of a check to GNOR. He said he didn't know what GNOR was, but it's likely the Greater New Orleans Republicans, who openly supported Nagin's race against then-Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.

That may help explain earlier testimony from former New Orleans technology chief Greg Meffert, who said that Nagin's campaign asked him to raise $250,000, and that when he enlisted St. Pierre to raise $100,000 of it, he met the target by reimbursing others so he could exceed the individual $5,000 donation cap without being detected. Campaign finance records don't show that much money coming into Nagin's campaign coffers from sources associated with St. Pierre, but Goodson's testimony shows some of it went to other campaign committees that supported Nagin.

There's such a wealth of elaboration on the Greater New Orleans Republicans and their "strategic" relationship with the Nagin campaign that I had trouble finding the appropriate place to direct you to start with this if you're new to it. Try this YRHT link.

Also, this explains a lot about why the crime cameras didn't work so well.

And Goodson, who said he could build "about anything," eventually did hands-on work for city technology projects. He constructed crime cameras for the cities of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Gretna, Westwego and Savannah, Ga., he said. And he would climb to uncomfortable heights to hang the equipment, he testified.

Ritual de lo Muppetto

Meffert's testimony in the St. Pierre trial.

Disgraced former New Orleans technology chief Greg Meffert testified Tuesday in federal court that vendor Mark St. Pierre wined and dined him and treated him to nearly weekly strip club visits totaling $20,000 in 2003 and 2004.

Meffert said the money for what he called "ritual" Tuesday and Thursday night visits to Visions Men's Club in eastern New Orleans ultimately came from his department in City Hall, thanks to the contract work Meffert made sure St. Pierre's firm Imagine Software got.

So in his deposition, when Meffert says, "Sometimes I'd pay for myself, sometimes they'd pay" what he really meant was it didn't matter since the money ultimately all came from the same place anyway.

Incompetent corruption

I half expected Kevin Houser to be in this story.

A City Hall technology contractor bought suite tickets for Mayor Ray Nagin and his wife to attend the New Orleans Saints' first NFC Championship Game appearance in 2007, but the tickets turned out to be invalid, the company's executive testified today in a corruption trial.