After a recently-published book alleging that Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) slept with prostitutes rocked the Bayou State’s crowded U.S. Senate race, one of Boustany’s 23 opponents, State Treasurer Jack Kennedy, urged him to sue the publisher if the allegations were false.
On Monday, Boustany did exactly that, filing a defamation lawsuit against “Murder in the Bayou” author Ethan Brown and his publisher, Simon & Schuster/Scribner, in Louisiana state court in Lafayette.
“The law does not allow someone to slander another person to sell books, not even public officials,” Boustany’s lawyer, Jimmy Faircloth, wrote in an emailed statement to TPM.
“Mr. Brown either made up the story or he’s peddling political garbage that he knew or should have known is false,” the statement continued. “It’s easy to spread hateful lies about others, but it’s not easy to defend it under oath while facing the prospects of perjury. This lie will be exposed and those responsible will be held accountable.”
In Brown’s book, which traces the story of eight sex workers who were murdered in Jefferson Davis Parish between 2005-2009, the veteran journalist cites multiple anonymous sources who alleged that Boustany was a client of several of the women who were later found dead. Brown also reported there was “no evidence” that Boustany had anything to do with the murders. One of Brown’s sources was a former sex worker in the parish, another was a friend of the victims, and the third was an unidentified individual who told a police task force investigating the murders that Boustany had a sexual relationship with at least one of the so-called “Jeff Davis 8.”
The prostitution allegations first drew national attention after Boustany’s wife, Bridget, sent an email accusing her husband’s Senate opponents of spreading “lies” about him, prompting them to issue denials. Once those allegations were widely circulated, however, Kennedy and other candidates seized upon them as a stain on the Republican lawmaker’s “character.”
In “Murder in the Bayou,” Brown also reported that a longtime Boustany staffer, Martin Guillory, owned an inn in the town of Jefferson where many of the murdered women met their clients and that Guillory had met “one or two” of the victims before their deaths. Boustany’s office said Guillory concealed that information from them, and Guillory left his post as a field representative soon after the book came out.
The Louisiana congressman is now suing for damages and requesting a jury trial over the prostitution allegations, claiming the inopportune timing of the book’s publication affected his chances in November’s election.
“Defendants released the book on September 13, 2016, at the height of the Senate race, to maximize the sensationalism of the defamatory statements about (Boustany),” the suit charges, according to a copy Faircloth provided to TPM.
After the suit was filed, Brown and Scribner stood by the reporting detailed in “Murder in the Bayou.”
“I stand by what I reported in my book,” Brown wrote in an emailed statement to TPM.
“We are confident that Ethan Brown’s Murder in the Bayou is a responsibly reported account by an experienced journalist,” Scribner Vice President Brian Belfiglio echoed in a statement of his own.
Read the suit below:
