Mayor LaToya Cantrell of New Orleans was charged on Friday with going to criminal lengths to carry out and cover up a romantic relationship with a city police officer who had been assigned to protect her, prosecutors said.
The indictment emerged from a lengthy federal investigation into corruption that has cast a shadow over Ms. Cantrell’s second and final term as mayor, which ends in January. She and her former bodyguard, Jeffrey Vappie, face a combined 18 felony counts, including making false statements, obstruction of justice and conspiracy.
The indictment “reflects the prosecution of two public officials alleged to have engaged in a yearslong continuing fraud scheme that used public money for personal ends,” Michael M. Simpson, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, said in a news conference on Friday afternoon.
“They perpetuated that fraud scheme,” he added, “by taking steps to keep individuals silent, to deceive subordinates and to obstruct investigations into their relationship, including one conducted by a federal grand jury.”
Ms. Cantrell’s lawyer, Edward Castaing, confirmed the indictment but declined to address its specifics, saying in a text message, “It will take me too much time to study the indictment and make an appropriate comment.” In a statement on Friday evening, the mayor’s office said it would not comment until Mr. Castaing had finished “thoroughly reviewing” the indictment. But Ms. Cantrell has in the past aggressively denied having a romantic relationship with Mr. Vappie.
Mr. Vappie’s lawyer, Harry Rosenberg, also declined to comment on Friday afternoon.
Ms. Cantrell has been dogged throughout much of her second term by persistent claims that she has abused the privileges of her office — and by rampant speculation about her relationship with Mr. Vappie.
Mr. Vappie, 52, was already charged over a year ago, when prosecutors accused him of defrauding taxpayers when he was paid more than $7,000 for appearing to be on duty while he was spending personal time with a public official. The indictment identified the official as the mayor of New Orleans. Mr. Vappie pleaded not guilty. In divorce proceedings, Mr. Vappie’s wife accused him of having an affair with someone whose initials were “L.C.”
A local television station, WWL-TV, had staked out a city-owned apartment in the French Quarter, documenting the hours that Ms. Cantrell spent there with Mr. Vappie. The apartment had historically been reserved for official business but Ms. Cantrell, 53, treated it as a personal residence.
The charges against Ms. Cantrell add fresh turbulence to what has been a busy and complicated year for New Orleans that began with a deadly terrorist attack on New Year’s Day. The city also successfully hosted a Super Bowl for the first time in a decade, and has experienced a continuing decline in its murder rate. The case against Ms. Cantrell, a Democrat, also comes deep into the campaign to replace her, with a mayoral election scheduled for October.
The indictment unfurls how the relationship between Ms. Cantrell and Mr. Vappie developed, about five months after Mr. Vappie, a longtime officer with New Orleans Police Department, was assigned to the team protecting the mayor in May 2021.
They exchanged thousands of messages on WhatsApp, according to the indictment. They described the affection they had for each other, sent photographs and shared mundane details of their days. In one message, Mr. Vappie sent Ms. Cantrell a photo showing a pen in his hand and a drink in front of him. “I’m writing in the book as I partake in an Old fashion,” he said.
The two of them traveled to Los Angeles, Orlando and Scotland, among other destinations, all while Mr. Vappie was also technically on duty as Ms. Cantrell’s bodyguard. His travel cost the city more than $70,000 in airfare, meals and salary, prosecutors said.
During a business trip to San Francisco, Mr. Vappie and Ms. Cantrell decided to stay an extra day to visit wineries in Napa Valley, according to the indictment. Mr. Vappie was paid for working 15 hours, it says, on a day that he was wine tasting.
In private text messages, Ms. Cantrell described these trips as “times when we are truly alone” and what “spoils me the most.”
As the relationship began attracting scrutiny, prosecutors contend that Ms. Cantrell abused her influence and resorted to illegal measures to obfuscate efforts to investigate it.
Mr. Vappie was reassigned by his police superiors after the TV reports showing their time alone in the French Quarter apartment. But Ms. Cantrell directed the interim police chief at the time to reinstate Mr. Vappie as her bodyguard. That chief was later passed over for the permanent job.
When someone took photos of the two of them, dining and drinking outdoors, while Mr. Vappie claimed to be on duty, Ms. Cantrell sought out private information about the person, filed a police report and sought a restraining order against the person, prosecutors said.
To hide the relationship, prosecutors said, the pair deleted evidence, lied to F.B.I. agents and gave a grand jury an affidavit signed under oath that included false statements. They are also accused of lying and withholding information from a grand jury.
Despite Louisiana’s colorful past of malfeasance at virtually every level of government, Ms. Cantrell is just the second mayor in recent New Orleans history to be charged with engaging in corruption while in office.
Former Mayor C. Ray Nagin, who attracted both international recognition and scorn for his leadership after Hurricane Katrina, was charged in 2013 with 21 counts that included conspiracy, bribery and money laundering for his part in a sprawling plot of kickbacks and pay-for-play schemes. He was convicted and spent years in prison and under house arrest.
The charges against Ms. Cantrell, in many ways, represent the culmination of the turmoil that has come to define much of her tenure.
Ms. Cantrell, who moved to New Orleans in 1990 for college, led a nonprofit overseeing the redevelopment of her Uptown neighborhood after Hurricane Katrina. She then served on the City Council before becoming the first Black woman to lead the majority Black city in 2018.
Her approach struck some as curt and even abrasive, particularly toward powerful figures in the city. But she won many over as she eagerly engaged with residents who felt their neighborhoods had been neglected. Her steely response to the coronavirus pandemic as Mardi Gras became a superspreader event in 2020 further improved her reputation.
But perceptions of the mayor began to turn after she was re-elected in 2021.
First, New Orleans faced a magnified version of the woes that afflicted many American cities during the pandemic: The city’s murder rate soared to become the nation’s highest. Morale within the Police Department sagged and its ranks thinned. Many in the city grew increasingly exasperated with runaway utility bills, streets with crumbling pavement and boil-water notices that became almost routine.
At the same time, Ms. Cantrell was being scrutinized over how she spent taxpayer money, used city resources and carried out her work. The circumstances prompted an unsuccessful recall effort to push her from office.
The pressure on Ms. Cantrell — and the months of conjecture about whether she would be face criminal charges — intensified as others in her orbit were ensnared in the sprawling federal investigation, including a local businessman accused of perpetrating a bribery scheme.
Prosecutors said the businessman, Randy Farrell, had given gifts to Ms. Cantrell, including New Orleans Saints tickets worth thousands of dollars and an iPhone. He is accused of trying to interfere in a city investigation into one of his businesses. He has denied any wrongdoing, as has Ms. Cantrell.
In recent months, Ms. Cantrell has had diminished visibility. She has abandoned regular news conferences. And she has ceded some of the spotlight to Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, and other officials at moments when the city has drawn outsize national interest, including after the New Year’s Day attack in which an armed man plowed a truck into a Bourbon Street crowd, killing over a dozen people.
Rick Rojas is the Atlanta bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the South.
Pooja Salhotra covers breaking news across the United States.
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