Published November 21, 2024.

By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

The legal table was set: two bribery-related cases, with a dash of old-fashioned, honest-services fraud to back the corruption cake. “Back-to-back appellate arguments in two (2) Los Angeles public corruption cases means a morning of must-see TV at the 9th Circuit,” declared journalist Meghann Cuniff on X, formerly known as Twitter. First up was the legendary politician Mark Ridley-Thomas, the embattled former City Councilmember AND County Supervisor beyond seats in Sacramento in both the Assembly and Senate. Supporters of Ridley-Thomas, who is perhaps the most well-known African-American politician ever to hold sway in Los Angeles, were certain to pack the courthouse, and so they did. Even the overflow chamber was done to just a few seats, plus or minus those from the firms representing Ridley-Thomas. More legal firepower may just be the answer to Ridley Thomas's prayer for relief from his 3.5-year prison sentence.

MRT, as he’s acronymed, was found guilty in August 2023 after a 16-day trial of “one count of conspiracy, one count of bribery, one count of honest services mail fraud, and four counts of honest services wire fraud.” Argumentation from attorney Alyssa Bell, a former public defender in the Appellate Unit turned Cohen Williams LLP partner; her webpage notes how she now “leverages her background” for her clients in order to “restore their reputation and preserve their interests.” Bell’s barrage that rather than engage in blatant corruption, Ridley-Thomas had sought to “avoid nepotistic optics” was almost downright convincing. Most-especially for MRT, not-the-least because his partner-in-crime, Dean Marilyn Flynn, facing a maximum of 10 years in federal prison, had gotten the proverbial slap on the wrist in pleading guilty “to one count of bribery” in exchange for “three years of probation, including 18 months of home confinement” and a fine of “$150,000.” That’s actually more than Ridley-Thomas raised for his legal defense, “$100,000,” but still well under the value of the two scholarships and faculty job he had sought for his troubled son, Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, who had a troubled stint in the State Assembly.

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-131-mark-ridley-thomas-and-david

Part 132: Was the 2024 Election Hacked? Dangerous Lawfare in Bizarre Times

By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

I’ve tried to ignore this discussion; much like the Substack Nazis, the risk in going down the proverbial rabbit hole is that you will simply spread further misinformation. Despite this, across multiple platforms, seemingly left-wing conspiracy theories have been percolating. I write this as a whistleblower and journalist who for many months now has sought to deal with actual hacking, the LA Fed Tapes, with contingent criminal and civil case investigations. Now for starters, I think the Substack Nazis have all but won; if ever there was an American president who seemingly worshipped Adolf Hitler, it’s definitely Donald Trump. Don’t get me started, and yet, absent compelling evidence that Donald Trump and Elon Musk actively conspired to manipulate swing-state election outcomes as is being alleged, I’m not quite buying it. That’s not to say that law enforcement is always trustworthy either, and some people give whistleblowing a bad name versus simply spreading baseless rumors. So what’s the truth? Does it pass the test?

To be fair, at the core of this allegation are concerning activities. Elon Musk offering a “$1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes” should have been shutdown harder than the Federal Bureau of Investigation went after former Los Angeles County Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas for bribery and fraud. Plus, Elon Musk is now seemingly being rewarded with the creation of a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which promises to be just about anything but that, paired with Vivek Ramaswamy, an equally noxious figure. Moreover, conspiracy theories have spread popularly regarding Musk’s Starlink communications technology interfering with election results that are seemingly divorced from reality. The Rolling Stone article on this characterized this as "BlueAnon,” with journalist Miles Klee characterizing this in comparison to “QAnon,” writing: “And while certain clickbait accounts used Harris’ diminished turnout compared to Biden’s to suggest that Trump cheated this time around, right-wing misinformation peddlers used it to retroactively argue that 2020 must have been stolen from Trump.”

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-132-was-the-2024-election-hacked

By Ruth Roofless and Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalists

Finding housing in Los Angeles isn’t easy, much less finding the perfect units for potential tenants within a building. At the City Administrative Officer's (CAO) pivotal Homeless Strategy Committee meeting on Thursday, November 7, Assistant City Administrative Officer Edwin Gipson remarked that he felt like he was “looking for unicorns” in making placements. The real unicorn though might be the relatively new “Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Authority” (LACAHSA), a new-ish body designed to comprehensively tackle the housing crisis. Hydra-like problems of housing unaffordability and homelessness are nothing new in Los Angeles, but LACAHSA’s novel multi-jurisdictional structure promises a new approach to building affordable housing, keeping people off the streets, and getting those on them housed.

The CAO’s meeting with a single elected, Councilwoman Nithya Raman, takes place in non-descript conference room Suite 1500 in City Hall East, attached to main City Hall by a bridge over Main Street. By contrast, LACAHSA meets in the boardroom of the Metropolitan Water District Building on Alameda Street, with elected officials gathered at DWP’s usual chamber underneath elaborate lighting. The room was only sparsely filled with attendees. With 77,049 evictions originating from within the City of Los Angeles being processed through LA County Courts from February through December 2023, according to Controller Kenneth Mejia, the room could have been filled with those who were evicted many, many times over. The despair is real, as several public commenters reminded LACAHSA of their housing struggles. Indeed, at one point, the board even discussed adding outreach workers to the meeting plan.

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-130-looking-for-unicorns-housing

By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

Throughout the last year, I’ve almost fastidiously avoided writing about the “Presidential Election” precisely because of the obvious: the more attention paid to Donald Trump, the more it fed his ego and media machine. The fact though is that the national press couldn’t simply have shutoff Donald Trump, even knowing that he presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States of America. Simply put, he’s so unstable and unpredictable that his own national security establishment lost confidence in his ability to govern. This goes beyond just January 6, 2021, but rather to a persistent pattern of erratic behavior. The paranoid politics of Donald Trump are exactly the type I grew up fearing would take hold an increasingly petty, divided United States of America. The failure to imprison Donald Trump for attempting to overthrow the government may go down as the greatest political blunder in American history.

Simply put, President Joe Biden has underestimated how potent Trump’s radicalism was and how reticent the American public was to support yet another establishment Democrat. Speaking only days before the election, Mike Pence declared at Dartmouth that he could “never” vote for Kamala Harris, remarking that he was concerned about the “direction of the Republican Party.” Pence added, “I feel like the party—some voices in our party—are starting to pull back from supporting our allies, notably in Eastern Europe,” before suggesting that this was somehow equivalent to an issue to abortion. Pence’s description was an understatement. It’s not just that the so-called “Make America Great Again” movement risks nearly 80 years of established American foreign policy; it’s that it betrays it. Donald Trump has made no secret of his coziness with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and so it was that Putin did his part for Trump, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation identifying Russia as the origin of “hoax bomb threats...in five battleground states - Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania - as Election Day voting was underway.”

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-127-the-madness-of-donald-trump

So far, I've only seen one protest in Los Angeles. Expect that to grow. Also, congratulations Ysabel Jurado!

By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist
Published October 24, 2024

To say that Los Angeles is more divided than ever is an understatement. Perhaps no time more since the 1992 riots and the 1965 Watts “Rebellion” has the City of Angels been so stricken by divisionism. Ground zero is the Council District 14 race between Kevin de León and Ysabel Jurado. A career politician, Kevin de León is in fact of mixed ancestry, Guatemalan and Chinese, but more identifying with Mexican-American culture, and Ysabel Jurado is proudly Filipina. The two have clashed across 3 in-person debates, at least 2 virtual forums, and now a Black Lives Matter Los Angeles (BLMLA) billboard at 1050 N. Soto Street, which read “KDL Must Go,” has been vandalized. The reason that the display even exists is because of racism, but not quite like you would expect. Rather, it’s the product of the scandal that seems to never end in Los Angeles, the LA Fed Tapes scandal, named after the location of the illegal recording that precipitated mass outcry in October 2022, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO (the LA Fed).

Along with former City Council President Nury Martinez, former Councilmember Gil Cedillo, and the former President Ron Herrera, the group had discussed how to build up Latino political power at the expense of just about everyone else, and most expressly African-Americans. California Attorney-General Rob Bonta launched an investigation into the discussion of redistricting and indeed seemingly into the process itself, which has stretched more than two years now without producing a meaningful result. Indeed, Bonta seemed to blindside the Los Angeles City Council in closed door sessions, which reportedly concluded that Latino representation was insufficient, including with regards to De León’s district. Now here was Kevin de Leòn, the day after the passing of legendary Los Angeles Dodgers Pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, dressed in a Dodger Blue jacket, wagging his tongue and waving his arms up as if he’d gotten away with the political crime of the century in not only surviving calls for his resignation, including from President Joe Biden, but now having assailed his opponent Ysabel Jurado effectively through the media.

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-123-an-october-political-gift

By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

October 18, 2021: Meeting of Nury Martinez, Kevin de León (KDL), Gil Cedillo, and President Ron Herrera is illegally recorded at the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO (LA Fed)

September 19, 2022: Recording of October 18, 2021 meeting is posted on Reddit in segmented clips

September 30, 2022: Meeting of Ron Herrera and consultant Hannah Cho with Chief of Staff Justin Wesson by phone is illegally recorded

October 6, 2022: Recording of September 30, 2022 meeting is posted on Reddit

October 9, 2022: The LA Fed sends a letter to the LA Times attempting to block publication of the recordings

October 9, 2022: The Los Angeles Times and Knock LA report on the recordings

October 10, 2022: Ron Herrera resigns as President of the LA Fed

October 10, 2022: Mayoral candidate Karen Bass condemns the racism in the recordings; rival Rick Caruso attempts to connect Bass to the participants

October 11, 2022: The LA Fed launches internal investigation, reverses position on recordings as racist, and calls on Martinez, KDL, and Cedillo to resign

October 11, 2022: President Joe Biden, through Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, calls for the resignation of Martinez, KDL, and Cedillo

October 12, 2022: Nury Martinez resigns as President of the Los Angeles City Council

October 12, 2022: California State Attorney General (AG) Rob Bonta announces investigation into the discussion of redistricting

October 2022: Attorney’s for LA Fed former Director of Finance Santos Leon allege that KDL and Cedillo pressure District Attorney George Gascón to find evidence on the LA Fed employee and his wife

October 25, 2022: Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief Michel Moore announces an investigation into the source of the recordings

November 8, 2022: Karen Bass wins the Los Angeles Mayor’s race, defeating Rick Caruso despite being outspent 10:1 by a vote of 54.8% to 45.2%

March 2023: Karla Vasquez states that she “resigned,” but Judge Stephen Pfahler later writes that she terminated from her position as part of LA Fed’s “workplace investigation” after suspicious software is allegedly found on her computer

April 3, 2023: According to Santos Leon, he receives notice that investigators from AG Bonta’s office seize his work computer for investigation and becomes suspicious he’s going to be framed for the leak

June 26, 2023: Former Mayoral candidate Rick Caruso claims that the LA Fed Tapes hurt his support with Latinos and attempts to directly connect Karen Bass to the leak

July 2023: Santos Leon is is terminated from her position as part of LA Fed’s internal investigation after suspicious software is allegedly found on her computer

July 12, 2023: The home of Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez is searched by LAPD

October 2023: LAPD sends case against Leon and Vasquez to District Attorney (DA) George Gascón for prosecutorial review. DA Gascón sends the case back to LAPD for further investigation into the source of the leak

October 7, 2023: KDL and Gil Cedillo file civil lawsuits against Leon and Vasquez, and Cedillo also sues the LA Fed over the matter

October 9, 2023: Cedillo blames Democratic Socialists of America-Los Angeles aligned politicians and the daughter of the owner of the Los Angeles Times, Nika Soon-Shiong for the leak in an interview with La Opinión

January 12, 2024: LAPD Chief Michel Moore announces retirement

January 29, 2024: LAPD sends case back to the DA’s office for a second review

February 28, 2024: LAPD Chief Moore retires after 40 years of service; Dominic Choi becomes Interim Chief of the LAPD

April 26, 2024: DA Gascón declines to file felony charges against Leon and Vasquez, referring the case to City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto for misdemeanor prosecution

August 19, 2024: Anti-SLAPP motions from Leon and Vasquez in KDL’s civil lawsuit fail; Judge Stephen Pfahler orders the case to trial in June 2025

September 11, 2024: KDL blames the DSA-LA for the leak in debate with opponent Ysabel Jurado

September 18, 2024: Leon and Vasquez again deny responsibility for the leak in formal answers to the judge. Leon accuses KDL of intentional or negligent fraud in a civil court filing.

October 2, 2024: Los Angeles Times reports on AG Bonta’s Draft Stipulated Judgment and closed meeting discussion with the City Council over a redistricting settlement to increase Latino representation on council

October 7, 2024: Attorney’s for Leon and Vasquez file notice that they plan to appeal the decision to order a jury trial in KDL’s lawsuit

October 16, 2024: City Attorney Feldstein-Soto announces that no misdemeanor charges will be filed against Leon and Vasquez, citing “insufficient evidence” for prosecution, KDL and Cedillo accuse her of “having shirked her duty” and “injustice” in declining to prosecute the matter

October 29, 2024: Next hearing is scheduled in Gil Cedillo’s civil lawsuit against Leon, Vasquez, and the LA Fed

June 25, 2025: Potential civil case jury trial in Kevin de León vs. Leon and Vasquez scheduled before Judge Pfahler

https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-122-the-la-fed-tapes-leak-a