Jingle, jangle, jingle. Here comes Mr. Bingle. With another message from Kris Kringle!
The rumors have been out there for years folks, that Kenner mayor Mike Yenni has a special friend from his days at Jesuit. Before I get to that though we need to hop into the Wayback Machine, setting the dial for July 8, 2010 for this Drew Broach/Mary Sparacello story:
The FBI is trying to determine whether Mike Yenni’s personal text messages ended up in the hands of his political opponent when Yenni was Kenner’s chief administrative officer and preparing to run for mayor of the city, according to sources familiar with the inquiry.
Kenner administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they already suspect that the top two employees in the city’s Information Technology Department used City Hall’s computer servers to covertly download Yenni’s text messages on at least two occasions, once in December and once in January. The officials described the acts as a violation of city policy, although the employees’ attorney said monitoring text messages and e-mail traffic was an authorized function of their jobs.
But the federal investigation is focused on whether the pair gave Yenni’s messages to individuals outside City Hall, including Jefferson Parish Councilman Louis Congemi, who also was preparing to run for mayor and perhaps could have used the messages for political gain.
I do not know what the FBI found but I can vouch for the fact these messages went to people outside City Hall and they finally made it to my inbox via Patricia, who gets a huge hat tip as we continue:
Sources close to Yenni said they first grew suspicious in mid-January, when they said Congemi approached at least two Yenni supporters with word that he had seen highly embarrassing e-mail messages sent by Yenni. Congemi described the information as “devastating” to Yenni and voiced a desire for Yenni to know about the leak, one source said.
Yup.
There is another way to look at this too as these text messages would also be considered prime blackmail material that could compromise Hiz Honner but I am happy to say it appears we share the same goal as this snippet from Mr Yenni’s campaign website explains:
Ensure all City operations are transparent
We’re the transparency blog and the reality here is every text message that was sent to or from any city issued cell phone is a public record under Louisiana Public Record Laws. Here is the rub as Mayor Yenni tells Slabbed it was his personal cell phone that was hacked and this in turn puts a new light on this deal. The new light is these are not City of Kenner exchange server emails sent from hiz honner’s smartphone but SMS text messages from his personal smartphone.
This point of the post would normally be the part where I would publish said text messages but as I indicated above I contacted Mayor Yenni for comment, sharing with him the picture I was sent and he categorically denied those were original text messages sent from his cellphone. He further told me since this matter went before a federal grand jury he would be contacting the FBI and I can confirm the FBI took his call seriously. Continue reading “About these Kenner Mayor Mike Yenni text messages Slabbed keeps bringing up”