The City Attorney’s Office of Alexandria — What We Know

1. The Warrant — What It Is and What It Has Done

An arrest warrant was issued against Valerie Gagnon, a Canadian citizen, believed to have been issued in 2021 (not officially confirmed), when she fled to New York following events at Bulfinch Square in Old Town Alexandria. The original criminal complaint arose from accusations by Dr. Pierre Paul Gagnon (her father) and Dr. Scott Leaf, who claimed to witness a physical attack — a claim disputed by the full record.

Attorney Olivier Morin, a Quebec criminal attorney, provided a written legal opinion that the warrant became legally void upon the death of the original complainant, Dr. Pierre Paul Gagnon, who died in December 2023. Despite this legal opinion, the warrant has remained active.

The warrant has functioned as an effective banishment — barring Valerie from entering the United States, attending to her dying parents, or participating in any estate proceedings. This continuing exclusion sits at the center of the City Attorney’s record in this matter.

2. Three Attempts, Three Failures

The history of efforts to resolve the warrant runs through three distinct attempts, each of which failed, leaving the warrant in place and the underlying harms unaddressed.

Attempt 1. In October 2024, Valerie retained The Law Offices of Patrick N. Anderson & Associates, 333 N. Fairfax St., Ste. 310, Alexandria, Virginia 22314. She paid them $4,000 in full. The firm failed to perform the service for which they were retained. The warrant was not withdrawn.

Attempt 2. On June 27, 2025, Valerie wrote a personal plea directly to then-City Attorney Joanna Cordell. She explained that her mother, Gaetane Gagnon, was gravely ill in Alexandria. She asked that the warrant be lifted so she could travel to be with her dying mother. The City Attorney’s office did not respond — not an acknowledgment, not a refusal, not a word of any kind.

Attempt 3. On August 23, 2026, Valerie wrote a third and final formal demand to current City Attorney Cheran C. Ivery. The letter gives the City 30 days to respond in writing and 90 days before escalation.

Across these three attempts — private counsel, a direct humanitarian appeal to the then-City Attorney, and a formal written demand to the current City Attorney — the result has been the same: the warrant remains, and the underlying record has not been publicly corrected or withdrawn.

3. The Death of Gaetane Gagnon

On July 16, 2025 — nineteen days after Valerie’s unanswered plea to Joanna Cordell — Gaetane Gagnon died in Alexandria. Valerie was not present. The warrant made it impossible for her to cross the border.

This is the central fact of the City Attorney’s record: a daughter was excluded from her dying mother’s bedside by a warrant that the City Attorney’s office was formally asked to address and chose not to. The lack of any response from the office of then-City Attorney Joanna Cordell is therefore not merely procedural silence; it is directly and temporally linked to the period in which Gaetane Gagnon was dying and Valerie remained barred from entering the United States.

4. The APS File — 475 Pages, Zero Disclosure

The City Attorney’s office also sits over a second core instrument in this matter: the Adult Protective Services (APS) file that was opened at Valerie’s own insistence to protect her mother.

APS case number W023408-050124, handled by APS worker Darleen Canaday, was initiated when Valerie herself filed the complaint in January 2021 to protect her mother, Gaetane Gagnon, from medical abuse. Over time, the file grew to 475 pages.

After her arrest, Valerie was told she was under investigation for elder abuse and was denied access to the APS record that she had set in motion. She submitted two separate FOIA requests for the file — both denied. No statutory basis for the denial was ever clearly provided.

Prior City Attorney David Lord (also referenced as “Lordd”) participated in upholding or issuing these FOIA denials. As of the August 23, 2026 demand letter, current City Attorney Cheran C. Ivery has been formally required either to produce the full APS file W023408-050124 or to cite specific statutory grounds for continued withholding.

The result is a 475-page record that was opened to protect a vulnerable elder and is now sealed against the daughter who initiated it, based on FOIA denials in which the City Attorney’s office is directly implicated.

5. The Complaint Against Cheran C. Ivery

The handling of FOIA in this matter has already led to formal professional scrutiny of the current City Attorney. A complaint has been filed with the Virginia State Bar (VSB) against Cheran C. Ivery for professional misconduct related to the FOIA denials surrounding APS file W023408-050124.

The complaint raises potential violations of Rules 3.4, 3.5, and 8.4 of the Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct. It specifically addresses whether FOIA denials were used to shield City officials and affiliated actors from scrutiny rather than to serve lawful transparency obligations.

In parallel with this ethics complaint, the August 23, 2026 letter to City Attorney Cheran C. Ivery places her on notice that continued maintenance of a warrant alleged to be legally void, and continued withholding of the APS file without clear statutory basis, will be treated as matters for regulatory and civil rights oversight.

6. The Connections — Friedman, Cullen, and the City

The City Attorney’s office does not stand alone in this record. It sits at the intersection of every major instrument used against Valerie: the warrant, the APS file, and the FOIA denials. Around that intersection are two additional actors whose roles shed light on how legal, financial, and policing power converged in and around Bulfinch Square.

Foster S.B. Friedman — the attorney who drafted the Gaetane Gagnon Trust, served as Trust Protector, and self-notarized the document — has since been named accountant for the City of Virginia. The same man embedded in the financial architecture around Bulfinch Square now serves the city whose attorney ignored a dying woman’s daughter for nineteen days.

Judge Thomas Cullen presided over Valerie’s 2021 criminal proceedings while simultaneously serving as Chief Legal Adviser to the Alexandria Police Department — the department whose report formed the basis of the charges against her. He did not recuse himself. He now sits as a Justice of the Virginia Supreme Court.

Taken together, these roles frame the City Attorney’s office as one node in a wider structure: a trust architect tied to Bulfinch Square finances who later serves the city, a judge overseeing Valerie’s criminal case while advising the police department that produced the underlying report, and City Attorneys — Joanna Cordell, David Lord, and now Cheran C. Ivery — whose decisions on warrants and records have determined who is heard, who is silenced, and who is kept out.

7. What Happens Next

As of the August 23, 2026 demand letter, the City Attorney’s office, now led by Cheran C. Ivery, stands at a decision point. The letter sets out explicit escalation paths if the City continues to maintain the warrant and to withhold the APS file without clear lawful justification.

The threatened actions are fourfold:

• Virginia State Bar complaint against Cheran C. Ivery personally for maintaining a legally void warrant.
• Virginia FOIA Advisory Council complaint regarding APS file W023408-050124.
• U.S. Department of Justice civil rights complaint regarding use of the warrant as a tool of exclusion.
• Full public documentation of the timeline on the public record, including on this site.

These escalation threats are not speculative; they are explicitly articulated in the August 23, 2026 letter and are grounded in the factual history outlined above: a warrant that has operated as banishment, a 475-page APS file kept out of view, FOIA denials in which prior City Attorney David Lord and current City Attorney Cheran C. Ivery are implicated, and the death of Gaetane Gagnon after a direct plea to the City Attorney went unanswered.

This page exists to ensure that whatever the City of Alexandria chooses to do next, the record of what has already been done — and not done — by its City Attorneys in the matter of Valerie Gagnon remains public, specific, and preserved.