St. John president’s mother-in-law admits she would have benefited from land deal

NEW ORLEANS – Evidence unveiled Tuesday in federal court showed St. John the Baptist Parish President Jaclyn Hotard’s family stood to make money from a land deal she helped facilitate through rezoning efforts. 

Hotard testified that she was unaware of the connection at the time.

The jury heard witness testimony and saw text messages that indicated Hotard maintained frequent communications about the zoning matter with her mother-in-law, Darla Gaudet, who owned several tracts of land within the proposed site of a now-defunct Greenfield industrial grain terminal. The jurors also learned that Hotard’s husband had some financial interest in the deal as well. 

Hotard and the St. John Parish Council were in negotiations with Greenfield as the company sought permits and land for the project planned for the Wallace community. Before they could close the deal, council members needed to rezone the land from residential to heavy industrial. Hotard personally signed the application for Greenfield, testifying she was following direction from the parish council.  

Testifying from the witness stand Tuesday, Gaudet admitted she would have benefited financially if the rezoning was approved. She acknowledged that her land, which she owns through her family business, was of particular value to Greenfield because it contained a railroad spur the company needed for its operations.

“I’m not the only business in St. John the Baptist Parish that would’ve benefited from it,” Gaudet said, suggesting many other people had financial interests in the deal.

Gaudet admitted that her son, Russell Gaudet, who married Hotard in 2019, is the beneficiary of a family trust that owns the land, but she said his share of the trust is only about 8.3%.

Gaudet’s land and the other parcels that made up the proposed Greenfield site have been at the center of a zoning issue that dates back decades. Under questioning from Hotard’s defense lawyers, Gaudet pointed out that her land was zoned as industrial when she originally purchased it in 2013. She also said her son won’t receive the land until she dies. 

Later in Tuesday’s proceedings, Hotard took the stand in her own defense and said she was unaware that her husband was a beneficiary of the trust.

“We just married five years ago … We don’t discuss his family’s business at all,” the parish president said.

U.S. District Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown, who is presiding over the case, gave Hotard multiple warnings about providing lengthy answers that strayed from the questions being asked. The judge also interjected when Hotard’s attorney, Ike Spears, asked questions that she said turned into personal testimony. 

Free speech lawsuit

While Hotard’s financial interests are not directly on trial in the lawsuit, they form the basis of the case. The dispute arose from a Nov. 28, 2023, parish council meeting at which Wallace resident Joy Banner sought to inform members about the Gaudet family land trust and an ethics complaint she filed on the matter the month before. 

Banner intended to speak against a resolution Hotard had placed on the meeting’s agenda to ask the parish council to hire an attorney to defend her in the ethics investigation. Video of that council meeting was played in court Monday. It showed Hotard interrupting Banner, with Council Chairman Michael Wright stopping Banner to read a state law he said prohibited public disclosure of information from an ethics investigation.

A federal judge ruled in 2014 that the law in question was unconstitutional. Wright testified that he wasn’t aware of that ruling and didn’t notice a note at the top of the statute marking it as unconstitutional.

Banner would later file a federal lawsuit against Hotard and Wright, claiming her First Amendment rights were violated at the meeting. The judge is being asked to void the council vote to approve hiring an attorney for Hotard’s ethics case.

The defense asserted in court Tuesday that Hotard and Wright felt they had a duty to stop Banner’s speech because they believed it was a crime to speak publicly about ethics investigations.

“She was getting off topic and speaking about an ethics complaint that to my understanding was confidential,” Wright said from the witness stand.

They showed the jury letters and documents the Louisiana Board of Ethics sent to Hotard and Banner stamped with the word “CONFIDENTIAL.” 

Mallory Guillot, an ethics board staff attorney who handled the complaint against Hotard, testified the confidentiality restrictions apply only to the members and staff of the Ethics Board and not to the general public. Under cross examination, Guillot acknowledged the investigation found Hotard committed no violations but could not elaborate because Judge Brown has limited testimony about the ethics findings. 

Jury sees Hotard’s text messages

The first half of Tuesday’s proceedings were dominated by text message evidence the defendants unsuccessfully fought to keep private. They revealed Hotard kept her mother-in-law informed about the Greenfield rezoning application. In one instance, Hotard offered to text her a “play by play” of an April 9, 2024, council meeting. Gaudet texted “Thank goodness” upon learning the council’s rezoning vote passed.

One of Banner’s attorneys, William Most, showed several other text messages to the jury in which the women spoke disparagingly about Banner even before the November 2023 meeting. In an exchange dated Oct. 16, 2023, Hotard texted Gaudet: “I wanted to choke that woman!” and called Banner a “bitch.” 

In her testimony, Gaudet claimed Hotard could have been speaking about someone else. Banner’s lawyer then confronted the parish president with her testimony from an earlier deposition in which she said she believed it was Banner that Hotard wanted to choke.

Spears, who is also representing Wright, argued Banner had refused to follow the parish council rules on the public comment during the November 2023 meeting. 

Wright and other defense witnesses said it has long been the rule at council meetings to only allow the public to speak specifically about agenda items. Under questioning from Most, Wright acknowledged the council has never formally adopted such a rule.