Britney Spears tried to contact Louisiana governor from mental health facility in 2019

Pop star Britney Spears reportedly tried to contact Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) from a mental health facility she was checked into in 2019. 

The New York Post’s Page Six reported on Monday that Spears posted and then deleted several screenshots through her Instagram account of text messages she sent to her mother, a friend from home and her attorney at that time.

One of the screenshotted texts to her friend, Jansen Fitzgerald, included a mention of Edwards, with Spears saying in the message, “I need John bells number please,” according to the screenshot of the post shared by Page Six. In a caption for the post, according to the outlet, Spears said of the messages to her friend that Fitzgerald was “supposed to help me get a new lawyer.”

In a statement, Edwards’s office confirmed to Louisiana-based newspaper The Advocate that the pop star was trying to contact him, noting that the governor’s family and Spears’s family have long been acquainted. 

“The Spears and Edwards families have known each other for decades,” an Edwards spokesperson told the newspaper. 

When reached for comment, Edwards’s office referred The Hill to its statement to The Advocate on the matter. 

A Los Angeles judge ruled in November to end Spears’s 13-year conservatorship, which she was first placed under in 2008 after experiencing a series of public mental health struggles.

The decision came after Spears testified in a June court hearing last year that she had been “traumatized” by the conservatorship.

“I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive,” Spears said during her testimony. “I don’t feel like I can live a full life.”

A month after the pop star gave that testimony, following the resignation of her longtime attorney Samuel Ingham, a judge ruled that Spears could choose her own lawyer.

Spears was invited to testify before Congress about conservatorships in February in a letter from Democratic Reps. Eric Swalwell (Calif.) and Charlie Crist (Fla.).