Harassment or Hoax? New Orleans Police Looking into Gay Slur Victim's Cell Phone Data

Police in New Orleans have obtained a search warrant that will allow them to examine the cell phone usage of openly gay sports radio host Seth Dunlap, who was the target of an anti-LGBTQ slur sent out on the Twitter feed of the station he works for, reports nola.com.

As previously reported at EDGE, a Sept. 10 tweet sent out on the station's Twitter account called Dunlap a "fag." New Orleans Police say they are looking into the possibility that Dunlap might have sent out the epithet himself, using his cell phone. Dunlap's lawyer claims that Dunlap did not have access to the station's Twitter account and so could not have sent out the slur.

Barrett Sports Media rounds out the story with additional background details, reporting that a few days before the offensive tweet, Dunlap had authored an open letter to New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, calling out the player's association with for an anti-LGBTQ hate group. In that letter, Dunlap referenced his own status as an openly gay man.

Brees appeared in a video that encouraged students to "share God's love" on "Bring Your Bible to School Day," which is an event created by virulently anti-LGBTQ group Focus on the Family. Brees subsequently claimed he was only seeking to share his faith and was not familiar with the group's decades-long attempts to roll back legal rights and protections for LGBTQ Americans and their families.

Local news source The Advocate reports that WWL Radio claims Dunlap demanded almost $1.8 million in the wake of the tweet, saying if his demand was not met he would embark on a "scorched earth" campaign against the station.

Citing a police report, the story added that Dunlap was also allegedly having money problems with credit card debt and personal loans. The case is now being looked at as one of "possible extortion," the article said.

The new allegations surfaced in the wake of Dunlap announcing he had proactively and voluntarily submitted to, and passed, a lie detector test that his lawyer says clears him of any responsibility for the anti-gay tweet. The announcement suggested that Dunlap had grown frustrated with the station's silence more than two weeks after the invective was tweeted out on the station's Twitter account.

When the station did respond - mere minutes after the release of an announcement regarding Dunlap having taken the passed the lie detector tests - it was to say that an internal investigation that included digital forensic work pointed to the tweet having originated from an IP address that Dunlap's cell phone used.

Dunlap's lawyer, Megan Liefer, said that the station and its parent company, Entercom, had allowed am "Anti-LGBT culture" to flourish in Dunlap's workplace, and said that the station's claims about the origin of the tweeted slur had the effect of "compounding the severe damage that Mr. Dunlap has experienced at the hands of Entercom."

This is not the first time in recent memory that a public figure has been accused of engineering an anti-LGBTQ attack against themselves. Earlier this year, former "Empire" cast member Jussie Smollett faced charges related to allegations that he paid two men to assault him.

Smollett has stuck to his story that two men attacked him, placed a noose around his neck, poured an unknown substance on him, and told him he was in "MAGA country." But police in Chicago - where the alleged assault supposedly took place - say that Smollett fabricated the incident, seeking attention and a boost to his career.

Charges against Smollett were initially dropped, but a special prosecutor has now been appointed to pursue the case.

Smollett was cut from the final episodes of the show's fifth season and written out of the series entirely when "Empire" returned for its sixth and final season.