As BLACK ENTERPRISE previously reported, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is facing a civil rights lawsuit brought by a woman who claims her personal information and photo were made public by Cantrell and her campaign members.
According to Fox 8, U.S. District Judge Nanette Jolivette Brown granted Cantrell’s motion for an extension of the deadline to respond to the lawsuit filed by Anne Breaud in July. As a result of the extension, the named parties in the lawsuit, Cantrell, Clifton Davis, her Chief of Staff, the City of New Orleans, and New Orleans Police Department officers Leslie Guzman, Victor Gant, and Ryan St. Martin have until Sept. 10 to respond.
According to Axios New Orleans, Cantrell has been increasingly tight-lipped since becoming a target of a federal investigation. Her office has been careful to keep city employees from speaking to the press unsupervised. They have even gone as far as chaperoning any media phone interviews, regardless of whether or not the mayor is a subject of the interviews.
This silence has also
extended to Cantrell’s current lawsuit. The only official statement regarding the allegations against Cantrell and the others has come from the City of New Orleans, which said its official response would come in response to Breaud’s lawsuit.“The City of New Orleans will withhold any comment at this time due to the ongoing nature of this litigation. Our position will be communicated in our answer to the petition.”
Although Cantrell was not named in a federal lawsuit involving her former bodyguard and alleged lover, Jeffery Vappie, she was mentioned several times in his indictment
; according to NOLA.com, she was identified as Public Official 1.Rafael Goyeneche, the president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, believes that the mayor’s mention in Vappie’s case could portend a forthcoming indictment of Cantrell.
“My belief is when they went to (the) indictment of Jeffrey Vappie, they had a whole strategy planned out for additional indictments,” he said of prosecutors. “I don’t believe for a second that it was an accident or a coincidence that they identified the mayor in that indictment.”
Goyeneche continued, “These are veteran prosecutors that don’t need to be reminded of prescriptive statutes. I’m sure they are much more cognizant of the actual prescriptive dates than anyone who is speculating that those dates are rapidly approaching.”
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