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Liz Murrill says she’s lost trust with New Orleans officials after indictment: ‘They fed it’ 36%
By John Simerman0% James Finn0% Matt Bruce36%
7/24/2026, 9:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Confirmation Bias, and Availability Heuristic, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 12% saturation with 171 hits. Analysis detected 1,525 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,429 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 43% and a BS Rank of 36% (13,680 of 21,187 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 64.60% of the article peer group.
If New Orleans looks upon her as a felon, Attorney General Liz Murrill chalks it up to bad influences in the city.
“They literally think that I’m a criminal because everybody told them I was,” Murrill said in a lengthy interview Thursday, a day after special prosecutor Laurie White dismissed the 16-count indictment that lit a political firestorm in Louisiana.
The Republican attorney general heaped much of the blame on District Attorney Jason Williams and Mayor Helena Moreno, saying she has reason to suspect Williams held influence over the grand jury despite his recusal a month before the indictment on charges of public intimidation and malfeasance in office.
Murrill concedes the fingerprints remain blurry on the blockbuster indictment, but she argues that Williams, at minimum, led the grand jury off the rails and said she won’t soon forget it.
“They incited this and they fed it.
They promoted a false interpretation of law,” Murrill said.
“And whether they directly put a grand juror up to it or not, other individual agencies will have to determine.
But you can’t say they had no hand in it.
Whether they directly incited the grand jury, I can’t say.”
The indictment accused Murrill of crimes when she wrote to warn Williams, Moreno and five City Council members that they could lose their jobs for backing an election for a citywide court clerk.
New Orleans City Council President JP Morrell, one of the council members on the receiving end of Murrill’s letters, said Thursday that New Orleans city officials are focused on the city instead of the mudslinging.
Gov.
Jeff Landry on Wednesday questioned whether Morrell should lose his law license over backing the election that Murrill warned about.
“The people of the state have real problems and pursuing vendettas is beneath all of our offices,” Morrell said.
Murrill, meanwhile, said Thursday she suspects a role for Williams even after his office recused.
“I have information indicating that Laurie White made a phone call to administrative staff at the Louisiana Supreme Court” requesting support after the indictment dropped and that she “stated she had been getting assistance from the DA’s office.”
White denied making that comment to anybody at the Supreme Court.
“This case was prosecuted by me, myself and I,” she said.
Murrill pressed the case for state and federal investigations to find out, “which I think they should do jointly,” she said.
“Everybody needs to have a full investigation to determine whether there was illegal conduct.”
What federal charges could be on the table?
White’s dismissal of the case came as an ad hoc judge, Robert Chaisson, was due to rule on subpoenas issued by Murrill’s attorneys for records from Williams and White that might reveal the origins of the grand jury inquiry.
Laura Cannizzaro Rodrigue, one of Murrill’s attorneys, said Thursday that she expects a federal investigation to pick up where those subpoenas left off in seeking those records and others.
Murrill said she may sue down the road for malicious prosecution.
“Right now, I’m happy to sit and let federal and state investigators (review) this matter to determine whether there was jury tampering,” Murrill said.
“That, to me, is the larger concern.”
Veteran former federal prosecutors who are not involved in the case said a federal review of the grand jury process could potentially hinge on questions of whether Murrill’s civil rights were violated.
Federal law makes it a crime to “deprive a person of a right or privilege” that’s protected by federal law or the U.S.
Constitution.
“The most plausible federal theory of investigation would be the criminal civil rights statute,” said Andre Lagarde, a lawyer for the Social Media Victims Law Center and a former federal public corruption prosecutor in New Orleans.
Investigators could be using the civil rights statute as a “guide” for grounds to prosecute a criminal case, said former federal prosecutor Matt Coman, who led the trial of former Mayor Ray Nagin.
In the past, federal prosecutors have wielded the civil rights statute against state and local law enforcement officers accused of serious misconduct.
The statute played a significant role after Hurricane Katrina, when the Justice Department charged five New Orleans police officers in the fatal shooting of two innocent civilians on the Danziger Bridge and a subsequent cover-up.
The former officers each were convicted and handed sentences ranging from three to 12 years.
The Justice Department’s Washington, D.C.-based Civil Rights Division has undergone dramatic changes since President Donald Trump took office, as Trump’s pick to head the section, Harmeet Dhillon, has fired veteran employees and reshaped the kinds of cases the office pursues.
Washington-based officials within that division have historically been key decision-makers on whether to file civil rights charges in jurisdictions around the country.
Calls for a federal investigation into Murrill’s indictment began the day after grand jurors handed it up, when U.S.
Rep.
Clay Higgins, R-Lafayette, wrote to FBI Director Kash Patel asking for a probe of “significant questions regarding the proper application of the law” in the process.
An FBI spokesperson this week confirmed the bureau’s New Orleans Field Office received the letter but declined to confirm or deny a probe, citing agency policy.
Assistant FBI Director Catherine Treadwell wrote to Higgins’ office on Thursday that the congressman’s concerns had been “routed to the appropriate personnel” and declining further comment, according to a copy of the letter.
Neither the U.S.
Attorney’s Office in New Orleans nor Justice Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. responded to multiple inquiries about a federal probe.
When the FBI receives a tip it considers credible, agents perform a “preliminary assessment” to weigh grounds to open a formal investigation, then seek agreement from prosecutors.
After that, “things like grand jury subpoenas and search warrants become available tools,” Lagarde said.
An investigation regarding a public figure like Murrill would typically be assigned to an outside federal prosecutor, possibly one based in Washington, D.C., Coman said.
Doomed partnership?
Murrill insisted Thursday that Williams, despite being a purported victim, had a responsibility to tell the grand jury that she was shielded by the First Amendment and the public intimidation law didn’t apply to her letters.
But in a TV interview shortly after Murrill’s letters, Williams called her actions “an abuse of power.”
Murrill said that only stoked the public flames.
“The DA is the first line of defense against roving grand juries walking around perceiving crimes to be committed in the community,” Murrill said.
“Especially in this environment we’re in now that everyone whose feelings are hurt thinks a crime has been committed against them.”
According to Williams, his office recused after the grand jury said it wanted to pursue charges against Murrill, who argued Thursday that Judge Leon Roche and White also had a responsibility to rein in the grand jury.
Murrill said she last spoke with Williams around Mardi Gras and described a broken trust.
“We’ve had a very cordial, professional and good personal relationship.
I like Jason.
That’s why this is so disappointing to me,” she said.
“It wasn’t just a political act or a legal misunderstanding.
It was an attack that affected me very deeply and personally,” she added.
“If they come to your house and try to burn your house down, and your family is in it, they’re in the house — that’s the threat of putting me in jail.
I have four children.
I have a grandchild on the way.”
Murrill and Williams finalized the historic agreement two months later as Landry was launching Troop NOLA, the dedicated State Police unit that has fueled hundreds of cases under the agreement.
Williams heralded the partnership with the AG’s office in his letter lobbying White to reconsider the indictment against Murrill.
He credited it for helping yield the most dramatic crime reductions in modern New Orleans history.
Metropolitan Crime Commission president Rafael Goyeneche described high stakes over the agreement, which he expects to survive.
“It’s going to remain intact because they see how important it is for public safety in the city.”
Murrill said the agreement doesn’t require much interaction between the two offices and that she has “no intention of withdrawing” her prosecutors from Orleans Parish, though her office is pushing to have Roche recused from more than 50 cases.
She said she has no plans to seek recusals from other judges.
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