NEW ORLEANS — Less than a week before the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin returned to the city he led during and after the storm for his first public speaking engagement since his 2014 conviction on federal corruption charges.

Nagin’s speech at Household of Faith Family Worship Church took a turn for about four minutes near the end, when he claimed without evidence that the federal prosecutors who put him in prison 11 years ago were “in cahoots” with the media who had investigated him for years.

He also used his sudden emergence from self-imposed exile in Texas to question the legitimacy of the criminal charges against current New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell.

Nagin was the first former mayor of New Orleans to be indicted when he was charged in

See Full Page