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THE VIEW FROM HERE - As reported by Guss Reports on April 8, 2025, Trump’s new US Attorney for the Central District of California will investigate the City of Los Angeles and Southern California other cities for fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption with respect to our Homeless Crisis. See Feds Turn Against LA
Heretofore, the FBI and the US Attorney’s Office, like former LA Superior Court Judge Richard L. Fruin, have protected the criminal enterprise which we affectionately call the “LA City Council.” Although it has operated for decades in open defiance of California Penal Code, § 86, the courts have gone to extreme lengths to protect the criminals while the death toll among the homeless continued to mount, Los Angeles housing prices escalated to the stratosphere, all Fortune 500 companies left LA, LA went from the #1 destination city in 2001 but by 2010 it fell to the least desirable city, LA traffic congestion went from bad to the worst in the world, and the DTLA high rises have gone bankruptcy, while others stand empty and best serve as giant canvasses for graffiti artists. See Graffiti Towers
No matter how huge the disasters, LA continues on the path of corruptionism. Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, who warned Mayor Bass and the city council that the LAFD is woefully underfunded was fired. Attorneys, e.g., yours truly, prevail in obtaining a court ruling back in 2014 that Los Angeles intentionally uses fatally [flawed] data and wishful thinking to the extent that it subverts the law are disbarred. Other attorneys, e.g., Richard I. Fine, were jailed for proving that the Los Angeles Superior Court judges were unlawfully taking millions of dollars in extra compensation, was jailed.
While Los Angeles’ decline relentlessly creeps onward like the hour hand on a clock, the Trump Administration’s Tariff Policies tank the world economy at the speed of light. Will the new US Attorney for the Central District of California, Bilal (Bill) Essayli, uncover LA corruptionism? Like his predecessors, Essayli has carefully designed the scope of his investigation to avoid finding any systemic corruptionism. While his prior experience has been primarily in the area of Riverside, he has been in California politics long enough to know the causes of Los Angeles’s decline. The City Council operates in violation of California Penal Code, § 86. Since each councilmember is required to vote Yes for each and every project another councilmember places on the city council agenda, Los Angeles operates like 15 fiefdoms where each council person is the Lord or Lady of their district. Until now, the US Attorney has protected the corrupt city council, which has accumulated 2 millions years of prison time if each councilmember were sentenced to the maximum four years term for each violation of Penal Code, § 86. There is no way Essayli can now admit the vast corruptionism at LA City without incriminating the FBI, the US Attorney’s Office, and hundreds of Dem and GOP developers as co-conspirators.
Furthermore, LA City Hall corruption has resulted in a massive wealth transfer from Angelenos to Wall Street. One example: as spot zoning unduly inflates housing prices, Wall Street backed mortgages increase so that buyers can bridge the gap from the actual fair market value of residential property to the highly inflated Developer Value. Since developers are engaged in a business, they expect to make a profit, and thus, they are willing to pay over market value and out bid families who want to live in single family homes. Whoever purchases a residential property for its inflated value must take out an inflated mortgage, but the family has no way to recoup the costs of the extra mortgage, as will the developers who will soon turn around and re-sell their properties.
Over the years, CityWatch has described the corruption in the LA Housing market and how it has forced prices sky high so that Millennials have been leaving LA in such numbers that the entire state has lost one seat in the US House of Representatives and is set to lose five more Representatives. Nonetheless, the corrupt juggernaut of excessive construction continues unabated. In the past several years under the economically insane tutelage of Calif State Senator Scott Wiener, the state government is taking over the housing corruption by forcing cities to construct excessive housing density. The new term for excessively dense housing is “Affordable Housing” so that the projects qualify for government funds, which are then not repaid as the developer’s LLC will go bankrupt while he keeps all the government money. See Sunnyslope
CityWatch has previously reported on the faux FBI US attorney prosecutions of Huizar and Englander, who ended up in prison. As far as the authorities were concerned, their true crimes were not petty ante bribes, but their interference with LA City Council’s corrupt One and Done Rule, where a developer need bribe only one councilmember to get his project on the city council agenda where it is guaranteed unanimously approval. Huizar and Englander were screwing up the works as projects would pass through the PLUM Committee where the developers were hit up for hundreds of thousands of dollars more money for councilmembers whose districts were miles away from the project. Huizar and Englander were converting the One and Done Rule into Here’s Some Loot for CD #1, CD #5, CD #14, etc. By spreading around the wealth, projects were delayed and Huizar and Englander were accumulating political favor like squirrels gathering nuts in the month of May. See Blind FBI
As was the custom and practice in Los Angeles, Huizar and Englander were also engaged in traditional greasing of the wheels, e.g. Trips to Las Vegas, miscellaneous favors here and there. The Feds seized upon these extraneous misdeeds for their criminal prosecutions while carefully framing the lawsuits so that the defendants could not introduce the overall criminal enterprise in which they thrived. For years it was as if Eric Garcetti had his own hit men in the form of the FBI and US Attorneys. See FBI = Garcetti Hitmen
What will Trump do? Since he levies tariffs on penguins, he just might look into real criminals. LOL
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. You may email him at [email protected])
