The Livingston Parish District Attorneyβs office has opened a criminal investigation into Council member Erin Sandefur after she admitted to sharing government checks that ended up in a campaign mailer for district attorney candidate Sherman Mack.
The mailer featured images of actual parish checks with unredacted bank account and routing numbers, compromising the parish governmentβs bank account, forcing administrators to close it and open a new one. The full transition will take weeks as the parish contacts all the dozens of entities it does business with to update payment information.
The criminal investigation will center on whether Sandefur committed malfeasance in office by failing to perform a lawful duty required of her as a public official or by performing any official duties in an unlawful manner, according to 21st Judicial District Attorney Scott Perrilloux.
βThe residents of Livingston Parish deserve to know what happened and whether anybody crossed the line,β Perrilloux said.
The investigation is the latest and most serious fallout from the campaign ad, which accused Brad Cascio, Mackβs opponent in the 21st Judicial District race, of having excessively benefited from the parishβs litigation. Cascio works as a lawyer at Moody Law Firm, which the parish government pays for legal services, in addition to his position as an assistant district attorney.
βWhile Livingston Parish was suffering defeats in the courtroom β Brad Cascio was Cashinβ in,β the mailer read, lined with images of checks along the edges.
Questions about how Mack obtained the check images quickly began to swirl after Parish Chief Financial Officer Mickey McMorris informed the councilβs finance committee of the incident at a Sept. 24 meeting.
βThe check was on a mailer? Wow, OK,β Sandefur said after McMorris delivered the news, seemingly caught off guard by the revelation.
The checks were not sought through a public records request, which would have been standard if a member of the public was asking for them, and would have prompted the parish to redact the bank account information.
An internal parish investigation completed Monday found that Sandefur had requested copies of the checks from a parish clerk in early August and received them without redactions.
According to the report, the records were provided in full, rather than redacted, because of Sandefurβs role as a public official. Government employees and elected officials can review documents without the redactions that would apply to records released to the general public.
Sandefur admitted to sending Mack the financial records but rejected the investigation, saying it is politically motivated.
βI committed no crime. This is political rhetoric,β Sandefur said.
Sandefur said she sent the records because of her concerns about Cascioβs involvement in the parishβs years-long litigation with developer Ascension Properties over its Deer Run real estate project. The parish paid Moody Law Firm for legal services related to that litigation, though Cascio denied doing any work on the matter outside of his role as assistant district attorney.
βI had concerns about corruption in the billing practices surrounding Deer Run. I asked for the payments to the Moody Law Firm and they were given to me from Parish government, and I shared them. There is no law that prohibits any resident of this parish from making public, public documents,β Sandefur said. βWould a person paid by the Parish be subject to a criminal investigation if they made their payment public or is this just weaponization of the DAs office?β
Mack denied that his actions were blameworthy.
βThe check images on the mailer are public record and include the same information any citizen who receives a check from the parish government receives,β Mack said last week. βIn fact, my opponent has been campaigning for the last year on taxpayer time while drawing a full-time salary paid for by the taxpayer.β
Cascio criticized Mack and Sandefur for their lack of concern about the bank account exposure.
βIf Erin Sandefur and Sherman Mack cannot see the issue with sharing this account information publicly, Iβd like to see them share their checking account numbers and routing numbers publicly,β Cascio said.
Perrilloux said he was initially hesitant to open an investigation, believing Sandefurβs actions were likely limited to internal policy violations for the council to handle internally rather than potential criminal conduct. But the combination of her admission, her public reasoning and the burden placed on the parishβs finance department prompted him to want to investigate further.
βWe'll try to get the actual facts of what transpired between the Council person and the parish government,β Perrilloux said.
The mailer has become a hotbed of political controversy in what is arguably Livingston Parishβs most contentious race this election cycle. Parish President Randy Delatte has endorsed Mack, while Perrilloux endorsed Cascio, something he said would not factor into his officeβs investigation.
Sherman Mackβs campaign mailer, which was sent out to voters in recent weeks.