New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell was indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday, becoming the first sitting mayor in the city’s history to face criminal charges.
According to court documents, Cantrell and her former bodyguard, NOPD officer Jeffrey Vappie are facing 18 felony counts, including conspiracy and wire fraud.
Stephanie Grace, editorial director and columnist for The Times-Picayune and The Advocate, joined Louisiana Considered to break down the charges and discuss what lies ahead for the mayor.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
KAREN HENDERSON: Stephanie, can you start just by telling us how long have the feds been investigating the mayor and what exactly are the allegations she's now facing?
STEPHANIE GRACE: As far as we know, the investigation goes back about three years and the charges–I should say she's facing 11 counts of those 18, it's a combined indictment–center on obstruction, lying to the feds, payroll fraud, conspiracy.
Conspiracy is the big one because conspiracy is a story. Conspiracy allows the feds to say like, all of these different acts contribute to a conspiracy. And she's charged with conspiracy with Jeffrey Vappie, who was her bodyguard, one of her bodyguards. And also, according to the indictment, they were having an affair and took a number of acts to cover up that affair and also to profit from it, to basically charge the city for a time that he was supposed to be working, but he was in fact spending with her for a travel expenses when she went, you know, all of these trips that she is kind of famous for going on, he went on a number of them with her, and there are some expenses there too.
So, you know, the U.S. attorney said, we're not prosecuting an affair. We're prosecuting these official acts, but they really do all center on the story that honestly, if you read the indictment, you know, it's almost like you're reading a beach novel or watching a Hallmark movie or something.
HENDERSON: Mayor Cantrell and Vappie are the only ones charged in this indictment that was handed down on Friday, but there were other people whose names have come up in the investigation as well.
GRACE: And it's interesting because the indictment only focused on the two of them and on their relationship and actions surrounding their relationship. But there is a previous indictment of a man named Randy Farrell, who is a building inspector, and he is accused of basically giving someone who definitely sounds like the mayor payoffs in exchange for city work and favorable inspections, and actually having the mayor intervene when there was a city official who was raising questions about his actions. He is under indictment. He has pled not guilty. He is, as far as we know, scheduled to go on trial still. So when people were kind of watching the grand jury and seeing if they were going to indict Cantrell, they were also wondering if this case would come up and it, it didn't. It doesn't mean it won't ever, because sometimes the feds will come back and add additional charges, but it's pretty interesting that this is focused only on the allegations involving Vappie.
And I should add one more allegation that I didn't mention earlier, and that is kind of intimidating people who raised questions, and that includes the woman who shot that famous picture of the two of them in the French Quarter, wining and dining, apparently drinking alcohol while he's on duty, which is against the rules. And Cantrell, if you remember, got some information that the feds say was not public. So she used her position to get that information. And filed a lawsuit against her [the photographer] for stalking. So that's in there too.
HENDERSON: Now, these documents, the court documents give revelations into this alleged affair between Mayor Cantrell and Vappie. What do the documents claim?
GRACE: The kind of interesting thing here is that there are a lot of private messages between the two of them on the WhatsApp app that is kind of designed to be secure and messages disappear. You can set messages to disappear, and apparently they thought that's what was happening. But the feds have all of them, and at one point they said there are 15,000 messages from a period of about nine or 10 months between the two of them. And one of the things they use those messages for is to show allegedly that the mayor and Vappie both misrepresented details about their involvement in their actions because they had documents showing otherwise. That's a big part of this indictment.
HENDERSON: Stephanie, all of this comes a year after the mayor's bodyguard was indicted by a federal jury. Remind us what happened there.
GRACE: Jeffrey Vappie already did face an indictment. He had pleaded not guilty. Sometimes that happens, you see this when the feds are hoping somebody might plead guilty and maybe testify against someone. It kind of looked like that might be the situation. That is not what ended up happening.
There's not a lot of new detail about him, his actions. I mean there's specific details in the new indictment, but the kind of story arc doesn't really change when you look at it. There are details about which trips they went on in Scotland, where seems to be where this relationship did kind of reach the level it reached. A trip to Martha's Vineyard. The mayor had appointed Vappie to the Hanna board. He was allegedly attending meetings while he was on the clock as her bodyguard. That's another piece of this. And he had a meeting in Martha's Vineyard in his role as the Hanna Board. And at one point she did travel to meet him there, and there were some messages that kind of talk about her not being seen, things like that.
So, you know, again, more, more details for the script writers is what I would say.
HENDERSON: Well, of course this isn't the first time that a New Orleans mayor's facing criminal charges. Take us back to Ray Nagin. What was he convicted of and how long did he end up spending time behind bars?
GRACE: So you know the difference here is one difference here is that Ray Nagin was indicted and tried after he left office as opposed to Cantrell, who still has until January. She's lame. Duck. And the campaign's going on right now. Ray Nagin was accused of basically taking bribes in exchange for favors for contractors. And he was convicted. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and he didn't serve all of that because he got out in 2020 due to COVID, when the federal prisons were kind of letting nonviolent people out early and putting them on house arrest in order to reduce the kind of population and the proximity of people together. So he has been out since 2020.He has now served the rest of his sentence. He is living in Texas. He does not really come back to New Orleans to do anything public anymore. It's been a long time since we've seen him in the public eye.
HENDERSON: Well, what happens next for Mayor Cantrell and Vappie?
GRACE: Well, there's gonna be an arraignment coming up pretty soon when she will enter a plea, presumably it will be not guilty.
She will remain mayor. She does not have to relinquish that unless she's actually convicted. And there's, you know, practically no chance of trial would happen before the end of her term. Of course if she does plead, and I'm not saying I think she will, but you know, that would change that.
You know, the interesting thing is we have an election to replace her going on right now, and it's really gonna be interesting. One of the things I'm watching is how this will play in the campaign in terms of how people talk about her. Will we see her at all? The kind of dynamic, the fights between the mayor and the city council have been such a prominent part of the dialogue. Does this change the way people view that?
Or do people have sympathy for her? I mean, I think it's entirely possible that people look at this and say that she's really being prosecuted for their official acts alleged, but she's kind of being prosecuted for something private. So I do wonder whether there could be a backlash and some, some sympathy.
