NEW ORLEANS -- The leader of an effort to recall Mike Yenni admits to being questioned by the FBI over texts he sent to the Jefferson Parish President.
After WWL-TV reported the FBI was looking into Mike Yenni’s sexually explicit texts to a 17-year old boy last year, the Jefferson Parish president gave a public statement at a parish council meeting saying, “I have never been contacted by the FBI or any law enforcement organization regarding this matter.”
But sources say Yenni did speak recently to the FBI about a different set of texts – ones sent to him in recent weeks by the head of the Recall Yenni campaign, a group trying to collect approximately 91,000 signatures by April to trigger a referendum for removing Yenni as parish president.
Sources say Yenni alleges the text messages he got from Robert Evans III amount to extortion.
Evans admitted to WWL-TV that he sent a series of 10 texts to Yenni from Oct. 7 to Nov. 3, repeatedly pushing him to resign.
And he shared those texts with the station, including this one he sent Yenni on Oct. 26:
"Mike: I have the texts to (the 17-year-old). These are disgusting. Please don't make me release these. The people of Jefferson will be appalled. Your poor wife will be devastated. You sent him a text that you want to (perform a sex act on him). You need therapy. Resign today or your wife and the public will see these texts tomorrow."
Asked if that amounted to a threat or extortion, Evans denied he ever had the texts between Yenni and the teen to be able to release them.
“No, no, no. I'm not threatening at all,” he said. “In fact, I don't have the texts. I believed I was going to get the texts. In fact, I didn't get the texts. I was only able to view some of them.”
In his other texts, Evans appealed to Yenni's religious faith to argue he should step down for his own good and for the good of his family. He said that if the Oct. 26 text is read in the context of the rest of the texts, it should not be perceived as a threat.
“You can take it out of context, but I think it has to be read as a part of the whole, which is I'm asking him to resign for the betterment of his family and I'm always saying God bless you and your family,” Evans said.
Evans acknowledged the FBI asked him about his texts to Yenni when they interviewed him on Oct. 31.
“The FBI did look at all of my texts that I sent to Mike Yenni,” Evans said. “And they didn't indicate a problem. They simply made a suggestion that it's probably best that I not communicate with him at all.”
Asked whether the FBI had a meeting with Yenni, Special Agent Sidney Reed declined to comment.
This is the second time in the last seven years that the FBI has questioned Yenni’s political opponents for saying they would expose sexually explicit texts if Yenni didn’t give up an elected office he held or was seeking.
In 2010, the FBI investigated after the information technology director of the City of Kenner downloaded explicit text messages between Yenni and nine adults from a city server and shared printouts of them with her ex-husband, Louis Congemi.
Congemi was running against Yenni for mayor of Kenner at the time. After the FBI intervened, the contents of the texts were not released and Yenni won the race for mayor. Nobody was ever charged with a crime in that case.