Stephanie Grace: DC-style scorched earth politics come to LA | Columnist Stephanie Grace - EUROPE SAYS
If anyone was relieved when the New Orleans officials who’d been threatened with removal by Attorney General Liz Murrill offered anolive branchlast week, it was short-lived. “It’s not over,”Murrill. . .
If anyone was relieved when the New Orleans officials who’d been threatened with removal by Attorney General Liz Murrill offered anolive branchlast week, it was short-lived. “It’s not over,”Murrill declaredafter a special prosecutor dropped the criminal charges she bizarrely faced for making that threat, at Mayor Helena Moreno’s and the AG’s other alleged victims’ request. Sigh. Moreno and five City Council members had wisely called on appointed prosecutor Laurie White to dismiss the grand jury indictment, which stemmed from a dispute about how to fill the newly merged court clerk job in Orleans Parish. District Attorney Jason Williams, who’d recused his office, sent a similar message: that the fighting was a destructive distraction that put all the progress the city and state have made together at risk. Attorney General Liz Murrill holds up a legal pad full of notes while speaking about the felony charges she faced from an Orleans Parish grand jury during a press conference at the GOHSEP headquarters on Wednesday, July 22, 2026. Staff photos by Javier GallegosJavier GallegosIt’s true they had plenty of reasons to stand down. Murrill and her Republican allies, Gov. Jeff Landry chief among them, made it clear they were out topunish the city— and by extension its majority Democratic residents — by withholding state resources. The state Supreme Court had already indicated the extraordinary charges were unlikely to stand. And Murrill, as part of her effort to have the case thrown out, was pursuing communications that may or may not have been embarrassing to the city officials. Yet Moreno and the council members were also dead-on when they wrote that their request was “driven by our belief that the public interest is now better served by moving forward rather than by prolonging litigation. ”If only Murrill and her allies would meet them halfway. In saying that, I don’t minimize the wrongheadedness of the indictment, or the mystery over whether it was really the work of a runaway grand jury or manipulation by someone with an agenda. I too am dying to know how it all unfolded behind closed doors, and I fully understand Murrill’s anger, just as I understand why the New Orleans officials were furious at her claim that they’d acted illegally. But neither Murrill nor Landry is backing down from the hardball tactics that started this most unseemly city v. state showdown. Both are pointing fingers without offering evidence of the type of wrongdoing that the city officials deny. Landry said that Williams should have his law license“ripped from him,”suggested Council President JP Morrell should meet a similar fate and floated a special legislative session to grab more control over New Orleans courts. And Murrill doubled down on her original contention that the council violated the law. This, even though the same state Supreme Court majority that deemed the Legislature’s consolidation of clerk offices legal and the council’s reaction improper — while also acknowledging lawmakers’ timing, right before the elected criminal court clerk was to take office, was “unfortunate”— said that the usurpation allegations at the heart of her warning should be off the table “due to the obvious confusion” surrounding the situation. Murrill said her efforts to uncover improper intervention that were once part of her attempt to have the case thrown out — which included, as my colleagueQuin Hillyerreported, her lawyers’ outrageous demand that anonymous citizen grand jurors preserve electronic communications or risk civil or criminal penalties — will continue unabated. If this all sounds heavy-handed, well, that’s a pattern with Murrill. Her initial round of bullying letters — which even her own lawyer Laura Cannizzaro Rodrigue said at the time wereill-advised— not only dangled the possibility of removing the city’s Democratic leaders but also having Republican Landry appoint their replacements. It also invoked the possibility of prosecution for retired Judge Calvin Johnson, who’d agreed to step up as interim clerk at the council’s request. If his name sounds familiar, that could be because he’s already received astate apologyfor wrongful prosecution stemming from a 1965 incident in which he and a group of other teens protesting for school integration were assaulted by a mob. In issuing the apology in 2019, then-Gov. John Bel Edwards rued that “Louisiana’s authority and power” had been “unjustly wielded. ”Separately, Murrill suedCaddo officialson procedural grounds over a harmless welcome resolution for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a suit the judge deemed “frivolous” and “improperly motivated. ” And she indicted former Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson, not for any alleged self-dealing but for anabysmal performancein office for which voters had already sent her packing. Murrill even emulated President Donald Trump by posting aself-aggrandizing memeafter the charges were dropped, showing her with red lasers coming out of her eyes. Indeed, Murrill and Landry are channeling the Trumpian worldview: that red states are at war with their blue cities, that officials need answer only to the voters who support them, that policy should be based on retribution and that it’s better to escalate than to deescalate. It’s no way to govern. And it’s certainly no way to make Louisiana any less dysfunctional.