Rep's staff accidentally posts campaign conversation online

Pocket dials can be embarrassing. Pocket Facebook posts can be worse.

Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany’s staffers learned the hard way after accidentally posting a private conversation via Facebook Live earlier this week. According to The New Orleans Times-Picayune, the staffers were unaware they were streaming from a mobile device for over two minutes as they bluntly discussed the congressman’s political rivals.

The conversation between the Republican congressman and his staffers, which has since been deleted, focuses on his Senate campaign and two of his GOP opponents, Louisiana State Treasurer John Kennedy and Rep. John Fleming. They are vying for the seat of Republican Sen. David Vitter, who is stepping down.

In video preserved for posterity on the newspaper’s website, Boustany’s advisers complain Kennedy is good at staying on message.

“I was just really hoping he would say something dumb in private,” one aide says.

Another responds, “That would be awesome, I would email every reporter I know.”

Boustany, who is pictured momentarily, says he spoke to a New Orleans doctor supporting him – but only in private because the doctor’s son works for Fleming.

It is not clear where the conversation took place and who was present because most of the recording shows the ceiling of an office.

However, Fleming’s camp raised ethics questions.

A spokesman for Fleming’s campaign told The New Orleans Advocate, “It is very disappointing that Congressman Boustany would break congressional ethics rules by mixing his taxpayer-funded office with his political operation. He has a lot of explaining to do.”