Give Tasha Clark Amar, the crook who runs the East Baton Rouge Council On Aging, credit for one thing – she certainly isn’t lacking for audacity.

Amar, who conspired with recently-fired Southern University law professor Dorothy Jackson in order to scam the estate of Helen Plummer – a senior citizen client of the EBRCOA – out of some $120,000 in executrix fees but was blocked by Plummer’s family amid what became a significant scandal in Baton Rouge, sued the family for defamation after they took their story to the media.

Interestingly, the case initially landed in the court of Amar’s mother, 19th Judicial District judge Janice Clark. After what seemed like an exceptionally long period of time Clark recused herself from the case and it was reassigned to Judge Don Johnson.

And now, Amar’s lawyer is trying to get rid of Johnson.

State Judge Don Johnson took over the defamation case last June after it was originally assigned to Clark-Amar’s mother, 19th Judicial District Court Judge Janice Clark. Clark recused herself more than a month after the case was assigned to her, and every judge in the 19th JDC soon joined her except for Johnson.

Little action has happened in the defamation case since then.

But Clark-Amar’s attorney, Charlotte McDaniel McGehee, filed a motion Monday morning that asks for Johnson to step aside and a special judge to be named to the case. McGehee cited a criminal case involving the son of former Baton Rouge state Judge Kay Bates. In that matter, the Louisiana Supreme Court in 2013 ordered that all the 19th JDC judges be recused from hearing a case involving a colleague’s child and later appointed a retired judge to preside.

McGehee downplayed any issues with Johnson during an interview Monday, and simply said Clark-Amar deserves the same order the Supreme Court granted during that earlier case.

She cited the many other legal matters involved in the Plummer dispute — including the succession of her estate and a lawsuit Plummer’s daughter filed against the Council on Aging and others — as her explanation Monday for why they asked for a new judge. And in the documents McGehee filed, she and Clark-Amar accuse Plummer’s family of going on “a defaming rampage making disparaging comments in every news outlet that would print their defaming statements.”

It seems like ingratitude, frankly, because Johnson appears to have done Amar a significant favor in not dismissing the case outright, as frivolous as it is. When you’re clearly trying to steal $500 per month for the next 20 years from an estate – and you’re doing so as the CEO of a Council On Aging which is catching tax dollars to provide those kinds of services to the elderly in the first place – it’s impossible to defame you. You’ve already defamed yourself at that point.

And the truth is an absolute defense to a defamation charge. There is nothing untrue about the things that family has said about Tasha Clark Amar.

It’s unlikely an ad hoc judge who’d be appointed in that case would be any friendlier to Amar than Johnson will be. Any judge not afraid of Amar’s mother would dump this case with extreme prejudice.

The real question is when is Tasha Clark Amar going to be indicted for violating state campaign finance laws in chiseling that $8 million tax hike on the people of Baton Rouge. Among other things.