U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, swallowing hard at accusations that another top prosecutor in his office cut loose at federal targets in streams of online invective, announced on Thursday that he had demoted his longtime second-in-command, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jan Mann. The move marked the second high-profile takedown of a federal prosecutor engineered by Fred Heebe, the landfill magnate who filed a defamation lawsuit last Friday accusing Mann of using an online alias to repeatedly slam him and others on NOLA.com.
It also raised troubling questions about how -- or whether -- a second online posting scandal escaped Letten's purview, and if he can withstand the political blowback.
In March, Heebe unmasked Sal Perricone, the office's senior litigation counsel, as the prolific online bloviator "Henry L. Mencken1951." Perricone resigned within a week.
Letten's terse statement Thursday confirmed that Mann had posted at NOLA.com, though it does not explicitly say she was "eweman." That's the handle that Heebe claims Mann used to launch her online barbs over the course of several months in late 2011 and early this year.
That theoretically leaves open the possibility that Mann used another name, and that "eweman" is the handle of yet another federal prosecutor. Mann did not return calls on Thursday seeking comment.
In the wake of Heebe's lawsuit, and before her demotion, Mann circulated a memo via email to all office employees in which she neither admitted nor denied the allegations, but apologized for the distraction the situation was causing. In it, she also underscored her intention to fight Heebe's claims and stay in her post, according to people familiar with the memo.
Letten's statement said that as of Monday night, Mann was no longer serving as his first assistant, or in the capacity of chief of the office's criminal division. Mann has held both titles -- which is unusual -- throughout Letten's decade-plus at the helm of the office.
For years she has been widely considered the savvy executive decision-maker behind Letten's more public image as a champion against public corruption. Perricone, Mann and Mann's husband, federal prosecutor Jim Mann, were long seen as the trusted triumvirate at the top of the office food chain.
The Mann matter has been referred to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, Letten said. The same office has also been tasked with investigating the Perricone affair.
It's hard to say precisely how broad either inquiry is. Letten's brief statement concludes: "Because this matter is now under review by the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., the release of any additional information by my office would not be appropriate."
Mann's demotion and Letten's statement are unlikely to tamp the controversy that now engulfs Letten's office over the online posts, leaving numerous questions unanswered.
Top among them is whether Mann withheld her online activity from Letten once Perricone was outed -- and whether she kept it from OPR investigators who were looking into the Perricone matter.
The "eweman" moniker appeared to be inspired in part by the initials of former Gov. Edwin W. Edwards, a longtime nemesis of the U.S. attorney's office. The user of the alias went silent the minute Perricone was exposed in March, according to Heebe's suit.
The lawsuit also claims that "eweman" and Perricone's online alter ego seemed to tag-team their attacks beneath the same NOLA.com stories. Heebe's attorney, Kyle Schoenekas, declined to comment Thursday.
Perricone did not return a call on Thursday. In an August interview with New Orleans Magazine, he said he posted the caustic commentary on his own time and without Letten's knowledge. They were "my secret," he said.
In public and in court, meanwhile, Letten has repeatedly portrayed Perricone as a lone online wolf -- for instance, at a June 13 hearing related to a bid for a retrial in the case of five officers convicted in the Danziger Bridge shooting case.
"I've said this publicly before: Neither I, nor Jan Mann, nor people in positions in authority in our office, to my knowledge (had) any knowledge of, nor did we authorize, nor did we procure or have any knowledge of Sal Perricone anonymously posting comments about cases or anything like that whatsoever until we learned about it in the filing," Letten said. "That is gospel truth."
The issue also came up in July in the federal case against Aaron Broussard and Thomas Wilkinson in the Jefferson Parish corruption scandal. In July, U.S. District Judge Hayden Head denied a motion to recuse Letten's office from the case, relying on Letten's closed-door account of the Perricone flap.
Letten has not said whether he has determined the identity of "eweman." The posts authored under that name disparaged criminal defendants, attorneys and others.
Among them was Arthur "Buddy" Lemann, attorney for River Birch landfill executive Dominick Fazzio, who faces 16 counts tied to an alleged payroll-fraud scheme.
"This guy looks like Boss Hog (sic) and hasn't looked at a law book since he left school," says one "eweman" post, according to the lawsuit.
Mencken also took a shot at Lemann -- who has often scrapped with members of the U.S. Attorney's Office, including Mann and Perricone -- calling him "a clown." According to the lawsuit, the two comments were posted within about four hours of each other.
Lemann said he expects to raise the online posting scandal at a hearing Wednesday in the Fazzio case, in which he again will seek to dismiss the case.
"My guess is I'm not going to let it be unsaid," he said, adding that he thought Mann should be canned.
"It seems to me that more drastic consequences should be dealt out," Lemann said. "I think the whole thing is a tragic situation, but I don't know how they can distinguish between Perricone and Mann...These people are supposed to be Caesar's wife. You're supposed to be above any type of suspicion."
The embarrassment the Mann and Perricone scandals have caused the office -- which has generally enjoyed a stellar reputation -- will surely lead to more speculation about Letten's future. U.S. attorneys are appointed by the president. Letten, a Republican, is the longest-tenured U.S. Attorney in the nation, being one of only a handful of Republicans named by President George W. Bush that President Barack Obama decided to keep on.
Days before Heebe's latest allegation, The Times-Picayune published a story in which observers said they expected Letten to stay on regardless of who won Tuesday's election. He was always popular among Republicans, and U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu -- the state's ranking Democrat -- went to bat for Letten four years ago, a key pillar of support that allowed him to keep the job.
But Letten's support could be weakening. In an interview prior to the announcement of Mann's demotion, Sen. David Vitter, R-La. -- who has been a strong advocate for giving Letten another term as federal prosecutor -- called the new allegations by Heebe "very serious." He also said the "silence in the five days" since the allegations first surfaced from Letten's office is "serious," and a "significant concern."
Still, Vitter said he needed to hear more from Letten's office on what happened before deciding whether to move away from his support of the federal prosecutor.
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., also said said in an interview Wednesday that she was troubled by the allegations.
"Jim Letten has done a fine job in so many ways, but this last situation is very troubling." Landrieu said. As the state's lone Democratic senator, Landrieu is in a strong position to determine whether Letten's remains through her recommendation to Obama.
The online postings by Perricone and Mann could also land them in hot water with the state Supreme Court. State ethics rules call on prosecutors to refrain from making "extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused."
Charles Plattsmier, chief disciplinary counsel for the Attorney Disciplinary Board, said intentional breaking of the rules can bring harsh sanctions, including suspension and "in more heinous cases, loss of a license."
Plattsmier said he couldn't comment on the allegations against Mann and Perricone, but that online commentary is a frequent subject of legal ethics debate.
"When you're talking about online postings or comments made by lawyers, there is always the tension that exists between the obligations of a lawyer not to do those things that would cause harm perhaps to the justice system, balanced against free speech rights and opportunities," he said. "That can become a delicate balance."
The bar is higher for prosecutors, Plattsmier said.
"Our Supreme Court has made it pretty clear they hold prosecutors in this state to a higher ethical standard," he said. "A fair reading is that they will be less tolerant of ethical breaches by prosecutors."
Source: http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/11/letten_demotes_second-in-comma.html
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