Pooyie!

PAS BON

When Mark Garber is sworn in as sheriff of Lafayette Parish in July it will be with some baggage. His estranged wife, Rachel Garber, has accused him of using his standing as incoming sheriff to obtain a search warrant for her email account and that of her divorce attorney, Richard Mere. Mere and Rachel Garber, as co-plaintiffs, filed several motions in April with state and federal courts to block a warrant secured by the Lafayette Police Department on Microsoft Corporation to search its files. The 15th Judicial District Court granted a protective order to Mere and Rachel, blocking access to the emails sought by the LPD in connection with a criminal complaint the sheriff-elect filed against his wife, accusing her of stealing thousands of confidential records from his law practice. The protective order, which also names the LPD and Lafayette sheriff’s office as defendants, quashes the warrant and prohibits the production of email records associated with Mere’s and Rachel Garber’s respective Gmail and Hotmail accounts. In a response, Sheriff-elect Garber claims his wife stole 32 emails containing 13,000 legal documents from his law office. The incoming sheriff also claims that financial information retrieved from the allegedly stolen records would prove valuable to his wife in their ongoing divorce proceeding. The various documents filed aired out plenty of dirty laundry and bad blood, confirming that the Garbers were on the outs privately while publicly displaying a united family front during last year’s campaign. A hearing on the matter is set for May 23.