DA Lacey Kicks Off the Whitewash Cover-up of the Sea Breeze Corruption Scandal at LA’s City Hall

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CORRUPTION WATCH-In the wake of the Los Angeles Times article concerning the corruption surrounding the Sea Breeze project in Council District 15, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey has announced her whitewash investigation to cover-up it up. The advanced draft of the final report allegedly concludes that poor beleaguered Mayor Eric Garcetti has been the victim of a plot by undocumented day laborers from Zacatecas, Jalisco and Chiapas. It seems that these day laborers have conspired to have their relatives unknowingly donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to Los Angeles City councilmembers and Mayor Eric Garcetti. (Photo above: Buddies. District Attorney Lacey and Mayor Garcetti.) 

Like any other Angeleno, when our trustworthy mayor discovered an extra $60,000 sitting on his front porch upon returning home one evening from a heavy schedule of TV appearances, he never bothered to ask: “From whence cometh all this money?” I mean, after all, whenever I find an extra $60K in my bank account, I never ask, “Hey, where did I get all this extra loot?” 

This scenario begs the question: What good would it do the philanthropic Mr. Leung to give Mayor Garcetti $60,000 in bribes if the Honorable Mayor had no idea who was lavishing gifts upon him? 

The LA Times article fails to explain how The Most Honorable Mayor would know that he was to reduce the number of votes on Mr. Leung’s Sea Breeze Project from 12 to 10 if he had no idea of the origin of the money? Maybe he thought it was just a periodic payment from the mayor’s favorite developer, CIM Group. 

But at this juncture, we have to spill the beans. Mr. Leung is not a villain. He is a patsy. Perhaps without realizing it, the LA Times Sea Breeze article paints the picture of Mr. Leung as the victim of City Hall extortion. Everyone else who has had any dealings with Los Angeles City Hall and the approval of development projects knows that every single project is unanimously approved. In fact, for a decade, the LA City Council has unanimously approved every project over 99.9% of the time. What would Mr. Leung benefit by Garcetti’s lowering the threshold from 12 to 10 votes if he was going to get unanimous approval anyway? 

Jackie Lacey, however, has a powerful ally in her whitewash – the public. Angelenos will believe anything. The chances are less than one in infinity that the LA City Council’s practice of giving unanimous approval to everything is not the product of a voting pact. For those educated by LAUSD, “one in infinity” is a small number. Since Angelenos apparently are not so good at math or logic, it must seem to them that 10,000 consecutive unanimous Yes votes in City Council is normal. Perhaps they do not know what “unanimous” means. Apparently, DA Lacey doesn’t either. 

Angelenos never notice that it is virtually impossible to flip a coin 100 times in a row and have it turn up heads 99 times. Go ahead. Try it. I’ll wait. Yet, they think that it is normal that 15 councilmembers simultaneously flipping coins 1,000 times in a row will end up getting “heads” 14,985 times. 

Let’s look at DA Jackie Lacey’s soon to be announced “deference” finding. She is going to find, based on no evidence whatsoever and ignoring all evidence to the contrary, that the one in infinity voting pattern at Los Angeles City Council is due to “deference.” 

The argument goes that each councilmember has so much respect for every other councilmember that he or she always -- over 99.9% of the time -- defers to another councilmember’s desires. 

But then we have Garcetti’s 2012 Hollywood Community Plan which received unanimous approval on June 19, 2012. This came after the City Attorney told councilmembers in March 2012 that the Hollywood Community Plan was based on fatally flawed data and the courts would reject it. In fact, the PLUM committee went into closed session with the City Attorney’s Office while considering Garcetti’s Hollywood Community Plan and the same information was conveyed to the PLUM Committee members. But after the closed door session, PLUM passed the Community Plan on to the City Council without any recommendation for approval. That’s right. Yet at the June 19 council session, each PLUM member voted YES for Garcetti’s Hollywood Community Plan. Why would the councilmembers who did not vote approval in PLUM then vote approval in council? This is not deference. This a criminal vote trading agreement in which all councilmembers must vote Yes. 

At the June 19, 2012 LA City Council hearing on Garcetti’s Hollywood Plan, Councilmember Richard Alarcon mentioned that the data was flawed and wanted to know whether City Planning could correct it in Garcetti’s Community Plan. In response, City Planner Kevin Keller, who had primary responsibility for the Plan, gave a long somewhat convoluted answer which boiled down to, “Yes, the Planning Department could re-do Plan with accurate data.” 

Thereupon, Councilmember Eric Garcetti insisted that his Hollywood Community Plan be approved, and within two seconds, it was unanimously approved. 

How does one pretend with a straight face that unanimous approval of Garcetti’s Hollywood Community Plan was based on a good faith deference when everyone knew that it was fatally flawed and would be rejected by the Court? 

In January 2014, Judge Allan Goodman rejected Garcetti’s Hollywood Community plan as based on fatally flawed data and wishful thinking. 

So let’s return to the plight of Mr. Leung and Extortion vs Bribes. 

Often one finds extortion and bribes as two sides of the same coin. A city councilmember lets a developer know that there is a serious problem with his project. After a few thousand dollars show up in the councilmember’s campaign war chest, the problem magically disappears. Whether we have extortion or whether we have bribery is often a Tweedledee Tweedledum situation. Let’s look at a quote from the Sea Breeze article: “At one crucial point, Garcetti invoked a mayoral prerogative – which he has used only twice – to make the number of council votes required to approve the project.” 

In a city council where each and every project receives unanimous approval, why would any developer pay $60,000 to reduce the number of votes needed for approval? This money has all the earmarks of extortion. Leung was buying something which was completely worthless – unless he was facing a threat that, unless the mayor got $60,000, his project was dead. When one is guaranteed unanimous approval, one does not pay $60,000 to have the number of votes for approval reduced by two. 

Let’s look at another absurd aspect of Jackie Lacey’s upcoming report. The councilmembers had no idea anything was amiss. Really? What person bribes a councilmember to the tune of $94,700 and then neglects to tell him who made the contributions?   

If $20K mysteriously appears in my bank account, I’m going to ask, “Where did this come from?” Apparently, Janice Hahn can get $203,000, Garcetti can get $60,000, Joe Buscaino can get $94,700 and then none of them asks the origin of all this loot? 

Let’s remember that each campaign check identifies the donor. Are we so naive as to think that in this day and age when compiling donor lists is a huge business, Garcetti never bothered to find out who just gave him $60K? 

The prime earmark of extortion is to let the “mark” know that there is a serious problem with his project and then after an appropriate amount of money appears in the mayor’s fund, that problem goes away. This is the pattern which the LA Times’ Sea Breeze article describes. (1) Problem (2) Payments (3) Problem disappears. 

Extortion is not rocket science. All it requires is complicit law enforcement and a very gullible public.

 

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.