This is the most Louisiana Politics story going in Louisiana politics today…

A former Louisiana liquor lobbyist is claiming the FBI used the threat of child porn charges against him in hopes of encouraging him to “wire up” on state Alcohol and Tobacco Control Commissioner Troy Hebert and possibly other officials to catch them in corrupt acts.

And included in a court filing last week by Christopher G. Young is an internal memorandum by FBI agent Maurice J. Hattier Jr. that says agents asked Young about allegations that Hebert’s office gave favorable treatment to Young’s clients — marking the clearest documentation yet the government has been investigating Hebert.

Hebert previously has denied reports he was under FBI investigation about whether he issued a liquor license to a New Orleans business in exchange for sex.

We already know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Troy Hebert is an utter catastrophe as a public official, so naturally he’s running for the U.S. Senate and trying to tie himself to Donald Trump. There was even a poll showing him getting seven percent of the vote a week or so ago. And some of you don’t believe in literacy tests as a requirement for voter registration.

Anyway, Hebert is being investigated, however strenuously he might be denying it, over accusations that as the state’s ATC commissioner he solicited oral sex from a French Quarter bar owner (she was female, in case you’re curious) in order to make problems with her liquor license go away. And the FBI is doing what it has always done; namely, shaking the trees around a suspect they’re investigating.

Chris Young, the brother of former Jefferson Parish president John Young, is one of those trees. Young was the lobbyist for the Louisiana Beer League, which might be the best gig at the state capitol, so naturally he was a close friend of Hebert’s. They did the whole fishing trip circuit together, and so on.

As it happened, Young also owned a piece of a hotel in Costa Rica. Young apparently has Costa Rica wired, and one of the products of that is Young got hold of a video showing a young male Costa Rican copulating with a donkey. Which he proceeded to send around to his friends, perhaps as an example of great Latin cinematography.

In any event, that got the FBI’s attention, and they proceeded to call Young in to talk about his new interest in the cinema of Central America…

Young — the brother of former Jefferson Parish President John Young — alleges that after the FBI found out about the videos, federal authorities waited months to prosecute him. Young says the authorities reviewed his phone and copied the contraband from it in August but returned it to him with the offending media intact, telling him they didn’t think he posed any danger to children.

“If you’re asking me if I think you’re a child predator or child pornographer, no. But I do think you are politically incorrect,” Young alleges FBI agent Stephen Soli told him in August.

Politically incorrect, indeed. He was by this point surely on notice that the FBI considered him obligated to make himself helpful should they need anything, and that’s precisely what happened…

In late October, Young alleges, the FBI approached him again, fishing for information about public officials and dangling the threat of a child pornography charge if he didn’t comply.

“What about Troy Hebert? You and Troy are good friends. You definitely know something about him,” Young alleges Hattier told him.

In Hattier’s memo in November, he writes that given Young’s professional ties, agents believed Young might have “useful information” for the government relating to political corruption, and Hattier acknowledges he mentioned Hebert’s name as part of this request.

“The FBI had previously received allegations that Young’s clients regularly received favorable treatment from Hebert’s office,” Hattier wrote, without providing more detail. Hattier also wrote it was a mistake for the FBI to have returned Young’s phone to him without first removing the offensive videos.

At this point, the intelligent thing for Young to do would be to roll over on Hebert. He’s a lawyer, after all, and he had to know that videos depicting juvenile bestiality, even if they do come from the Third World, are not the kind of thing it’s wise to share around – and that doing so was a singularly good way to ruin one’s life. And when the FBI lets you know they’ve got you dead to rights with such a video on your phone and evidence that you distributed it, you’re as screwed as the donkey.

Especially when it’s not at all clear that the kiddie porn thing is all the exposure Chris Young has where Hebert is concerned. Here’s something fun that came out of the initial story on Hebert’s ordeal with the feds and the French Quarter bar owner he allegedly got a really good deal from…

“The FBI now has evidence but is expanding (its) investigation further,” she said. “The investigation (is) going in this direction: Hebert makes trouble for a business. Then his number-one assistant Judy (Pontin), maiden name Young, sister to (attorney) Chris Young, sends word to (the) targeted business to hire Chris Young and pay big fees to get them off Hebert’s radar. Once Young is hired (and the) fee paid, problem disappears. Once (the) deal is done, Chris Young calls his sister Judy in Hebert’s office and the coverup begins.”

Asked how she knew Palmer, she said simply, “She is a girlfriend of mine.”

But Young told the FBI where they could get off, and for not finking on Hebert he gets to be branded as a child pornographer for the rest of his life. Not to mention he can’t be the Beer League’s lobbyist anymore with that hanging over his head. Not to mention that if the Louisiana Voice piece excerpted above had it right, the kiddie porn issue is hardly his only problem. His choice to clam up is as questionable as his cinematic preferences.

But finally, we have a long-awaited testimonial to Troy Hebert’s character as he tries both to skate from the FBI’s investigation of FellatioGate and to latch on to Trump’s coattails as he runs an independent campaign for the Senate – here’s a friend of his willing to take a federal rap for kiddie porn rather than rat on him.

Which, like we said, is the most Louisiana Politics thing going in Louisiana politics today.