Say this for Baton Rouge schools Superintendent LaMont Cole: He communicates clearly.
“He knows I’m getting a kickback from both of you and he plans to expose us,” the former Baton Rouge Metro Councilman wrote in a text message to a friend — who also happened to have a contract with the city-parish.
The message was one of several revealed after a five-count indictment of Cole was handed up by a state grand jury Wednesday. Cole faces charges of conspiracy to commit bribery, money laundering and malfeasance in office. The texts’ recipient, Cole’s longtime friend TJ Jackson, was also indicted.
Other text messages show Cole telling Jackson “Just took care of you in a MAJOR way which means I just took care of us,” according to the probable cause affidavit.
Another said that Cole “could use an additional 60k-120k a year,” according to the affidavit.
Regardless of the context — and, of course, Cole is presumed innocent — those texts look incredibly bad. It’s shocking that any person in public office would ever text such a thing.
It sounds like somebody operating with a brazenness born of the belief that he wouldn’t be caught.
The whole situation is made weirder because his indictment came one day after Cole danced his way onstage to smoke effects and entrance music at a back-to-school event for the school system’s teachers that felt like a pep rally. In addition to getting blessed by a priest, Cole thanked his supporters and broke into song, singing the theme to the 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls.
“Thank you for being a friend,” he warbled, urging attendees to join in. Many did.
The school board seems to be his friend. It has not made any attempt to reduce or limit his duties while the case plays out. Thursday, Cole attended a board committee meeting as if nothing had happened.
Board Vice President Cliff Lewis told those who attended the meeting that the issue would not come up.
“I just want to make it perfectly clear, we are here tonight to discuss the business of the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board,” Lewis said. “We are not here to discuss anything that anyone may have read or heard or said.”
Anyone going off topic would not be allowed to speak further, he said. Cole gave a report on the first day of school.
That leaves his Wednesday evening statement as the only public comment he has offered on the indictment.
“I’ve provided servant leadership to this community for decades, guided by humility, integrity, and ethical standards,” Cole said. “Today’s actions are simply a miscarriage of justice based on association, not attestation, and proximity to potential crimes without proof.”
That’s nice alliteration. But it’s also the sort of cloudy wording that sounds like it was written by a criminal defense attorney. Until Cole comes up with something better than that, we are only left with the text messages.
At least those are clear.