New Orleans, La. - Unsealed courts documents show U.S. Attorney Jim Letten now admitting that his former first assistant, Jan Mann was posting on-line under the alias ‘eweman'.
Letten sent a letter to Federal Judge Hayden Head after the Judge denied defendants Aaron Broussard and Tom Wilkinson a motion to recuse the U.S. Attorney's office.
Broussard and Wilkinson filed a motion back in May alleging misconduct in the U.S. Attorney's office following former U.S. Assistant Sal Perricone's admission that he posted remarks about several defendants on nola.com using the handle ‘Henry L. Mencken 1951'.
At the time, Mann's online posts had not been suggested and Mann is the one who laid out the case against a recusal.
She wrote a seven-page letter in July to Judge Head.
In the letter she stated, ‘Perricone had neither been assigned to handle the case before or after the indictment was returned and had played no decision making role in it. Our view on this was vetted in DOJ and concurred in by the deciding officials.'
Mann did not admit that she too had been posting on-line.
Just a few weeks after receiving that letter, Judge Head rejected the motion for recusal because of the limited role Perricone played in the case.
In Letten's most recent letter to Judge Head, he acknowledges that Mann herself was taking part in the inappropriate online activity four or five months prior to Perricone's resignation.
Letten even included an ‘eweman' post that stated, ‘They have been accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of our dollars and are charged with felonies galore. It sounds like a couple of you out there think that won't land em' in the pen. Haven't you been paying attention? You take the king down for anything you got him on. Al Capone went to jail for taxes, remember?'
In the letter, Letten also made note that Mann was removed as First Assistant in his office and is being investigated.
He also stated that he doesn't believe the court's July ruling should be reconsidered.
