The construction company’s attorneys said the staff and family members of the crew have received death threats and push-back from other work about being involved with monument removal.

“These telephone calls, unkindly name-calling and public outrage expressed in various social media, as well as other area businesses threatening to cancel existing contracts with H&O, have precipitated H&O’s cessation of work,” the attorney wrote in a letter to the city of New Orleans a few days ago.

Additionally, just today, Mahler reported that a Lamborghini parked outside of H&O Investment’s offices in Baton Rouge, La. was burned to nearly nothing last night. His attorney’s are suggesting that it could be tied to their involvement with monument removal, saying it is ““extremely suspicious” that the incident comes just a week after the company was announced to be backing out of the job over death threats.

Just two days before the company claimed death threats were the reason they were backing out, a source tells the Hayride that they spoke with Mahler and he admitted that he did not, in fact, support Landrieu’s monument removal and signed a ‘Save Our Circle’ petition requesting that the plan be halted.

The source also told the Hayride that at the time, on Jan. 12, Mahler did not mention anything about death threats to the company and stated that there was a $10 million performance bond that would be forfeited if H&O Investments backed out of the job.

The Hayride reported as far back as October of 2015 that H&O Investments was already working with Landrieu to remove the monuments in the city, with many residents eyewitnessing employees with the construction company measuring the PGT Beauregard City Park statue.