Ray Nagin Indicted on Corruption Charges
A federal grand jury on Friday indicted former Mayor Ray Nagin with 21 counts of corruption, alleging that while in office, Nagin took cash bribes and gifts from three city contractors and used his power as mayor to leverage a granite installation contract from Home Depot as the retailer was building a store in Central City. Despite New Orleans’ reputation for political shenanigans, Nagin is the first mayor in the city’s history to be indicted by a grand jury on corruption charges.
Damn racist prosecutors.
Racists
Patterico (8b3905) — 1/19/2013 @ 10:16 amplus he just stood there and let all those school buses drown
happyfeet (ce327d) — 1/19/2013 @ 10:16 ami’d like to correct the glaring omission in the headline…
and in the story:
redc1c4 (403dff) — 1/19/2013 @ 10:27 amHOW DARE YOU CALL OUR CRIMINAL POLITICIANS IN SOUTH LOUISIANA DEMOCRAT!!!
RACIST!!!
reff (76c7c5) — 1/19/2013 @ 10:42 am“Nagin is the first mayor in the city’s history to be indicted by a grand jury on corruption charges.”
That is what is shocking to me.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 1/19/2013 @ 10:50 amCouldn’t happen to a better corrupt demagogue.
It must be racism.
Jcw46 (eda37d) — 1/19/2013 @ 11:03 amActually, Red he was a registered Republican his whole life before switching to Dem in order to run for office.
Gazzer (4424a0) — 1/19/2013 @ 11:05 amMr. nk has been horrible scarce what up with that
happyfeet (ce327d) — 1/19/2013 @ 11:07 amy’all come on down now
Colonel Haiku (2f73be) — 1/19/2013 @ 11:09 amcook ya up mess a’trouble
Chocolate City
Lets play “Guess what party”
JD (b63a52) — 1/19/2013 @ 12:00 pmThis should boost his resume.
mg (31009b) — 1/19/2013 @ 1:37 pmthis has got to be bush’s fault…………somehow
old cowboy (f24682) — 1/19/2013 @ 1:56 pmThe lawyers are lining up for this dick swinging contest.
mg (31009b) — 1/19/2013 @ 2:18 pmBusses nagin won’t do a day.
That’s easy. Bush kicked off the GOP’s racist war on Louisiana black people in general by heartlessly letting them drown during Katrina. When he found out certain prominent Louisiana black people such as Congressman William “Cold Cash” Jefferson didn’t drown, he had his racist Injustice Dept. indict and convict him for corruption.
This Nagin thing is just another chapter in Bush’s racist war on prominent Louisiana black people who he didn’t drown during Katrina.
Think of Bush as Gollum and Katrina as Shelob who was supposed to do all his killing for him and you’ll get the concept.
Jefferson and Nagin were like Samwise and Frodo, the two who got away. So the evil Gollum/Bush had to finish them off himself.
Unlike in Hollywood movies like “Lord of the Rings,” there are no happy endings when you’re dealing with a real-life racist Gollum like Bush.
Steve57 (4c041b) — 1/19/2013 @ 2:20 pmI’m ok, happyfeet, thanks. Just on a little detour.
nk (57f658) — 1/19/2013 @ 3:20 pmgood good happy new year mister
happyfeet (ce327d) — 1/19/2013 @ 3:25 pmWe Knew He Was Incompetent; We Only Suspected He Was Corrupt.
Comanche Voter (29e1a6) — 1/19/2013 @ 3:36 pmIncompetent and corrupt are two characteristics that usually go hand-in-hand, I find, in the guys who get caught.
Let this be a lesson, folks. You’ve got to rise to the level where the Attorney General of the United States is lower down on the org chart than you before you can be so brazenly corrupt.
It helps if you’ve got a guy like Eric “no controlling legal authority” Holder on the team.
Steve57 (4c041b) — 1/19/2013 @ 3:48 pmHere’s another entry in the “name the party of the political criminal” game. This time it’s a Michigan Supreme Court Justice.
http://news.yahoo.com/michigan-supreme-court-justice-charged-fraud-212553072.html
elissa (57ebdf) — 1/19/2013 @ 4:14 pmThis would not have happened if Jim Letten was still U.S. Attorney.
They say it’s because the statute of limitations runs out on January 30 – but that’s only one possible charge. The indictment says it all stated in June 2004, and the last payment from one contractor was made several months after Nagin left office in May 2010. FBI agents interviewed Nagin as far back as 2009.
Ray Nagin’s lawyer told a talk radio show host nicknamed Spud (real name: John McConnell) that the indictment took them by surprise because they were still talking with the government and had talked about having another meeting next week.
In December (after Lettin left?) a contractor pleaded guilty to paying a $60,000 bribe to “Public Official A”
Everyone understood this was Nagin, although Nagin had not yet been named a target of the grand jury
Much of the money went to Stone Age, a granite countertop company owned by Nagin and his two sons. It got several shipments of free granite, or coveted relationships with local branches f a “major retail corporation:” (believed to be Home Depot) and other ways in which corporate accounts were used to disguise this.
Nagin also got free trips on private jets to New York, Chicago, Las Vegas and Jamaica, free cellphone service, campaign contributions, and payments of tens of thousands of dollars in cash, checks and monthly wire transfers. One important vendor was convicted in the spring of 2011 on 53 corruption related charges.
Back in 2010 Nagin’s chief technology officer, Greg Meffert, pleaded guilty to taking more than $800,000 in bribes. The current indictment states that in June 2004 Nagin issued an executive order allowing Meffert to engage a city vendor in a no-bid contract, and apparently makes that the beginning.
There had also been a series of newspaper reports on the New Orleans Times Picayune in 2010, but I guess Lettin kept the lid on until December, 2012.
Nagin is now living in Texas.
Those paying bribes received multimillion dollar contracts for reconstruction projects and some smaller property management projects.
Sammy Finkelman (4ffa4d) — 1/19/2013 @ 5:41 pmChocolate city anyone?
Kevin P. (1df29c) — 1/19/2013 @ 8:01 pmIndictments aren’t by any means always fatal to one’s political fortunes in Louisiana, viz my all-time favorite campaign slogan, used by Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards‘ supporters to help him defeat David Duke: “Vote for the crook. It’s important.” The alternative slogan was “Vote for the lizard, not the wizard.”
And then there’s Dollar Bill Jefferson, whom the voters of Louisiana reelected even after the feds found the $90k in ready cash he kept in his freezer.
Beldar (a587c1) — 1/20/2013 @ 12:26 amAh, should have read previous comments more closely, I see that Dollar Bill has already been mentioned.
Beldar (a587c1) — 1/20/2013 @ 12:27 amTo his credit, Dollar Bill seemed to believe in a frozen budget …
Alasdair (a28b33) — 1/20/2013 @ 3:41 amGreetings:
No longer one of US Attorney General Holder’s people ???
11B40 (0c1c9b) — 1/20/2013 @ 9:37 amComment by Steve57 (4c041b) — 1/19/2013 @ 3:48 pm
It helps when you tell him to do the heavy-lifting so his fingerprints are all over it too.
askeptic (2bb434) — 1/20/2013 @ 1:10 pmWhat kind of disaster in L.A. will it take to bring this kind of attention to Tony V?
askeptic (2bb434) — 1/20/2013 @ 1:12 pmInquiring minds want to know.
Was he not the dude who did the impression of the mayor of Detroit from RoboCop 2 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?
Michael Ejercito (2e0217) — 1/20/2013 @ 5:44 pm