The Los Angeles Occasions and Shopper Watchdog requested a federal court docket Wednesday to unseal proof associated to the prison investigation of former Metropolis Atty. Mike Feuer’s workplace and the Division of Water and Energy.
The Occasions and the patron advocacy group filed an software in search of to make public 33 search warrants, affidavits and different paperwork within the authorities’s case.
Jerry Flanagan, authorized director for Shopper Watchdog, stated the regulation clearly states the general public has a proper to paperwork when a authorities prison investigation has completed.
The 1,451 pages will shed extra gentle on the scandal, known as an “extremely sordid affair” final 12 months by U.S. District Courtroom Choose Stanley Blumenfeld Jr., who’s overseeing the prison case.
The appliance, filed by The Occasions and Shopper Watchdog in U.S. District Courtroom’s Central District, additionally states the general public has a proper to know “whether or not or not Mr. Feuer bears culpability for the scandal.” Feuer, the previous metropolis lawyer, is operating within the March 5 election for the thirtieth Congressional District seat being vacated by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank). Feuer is among the many prime fundraisers within the race.
Prosecutors final 12 months confirmed that their probe into illicit metropolis contracts and a sham lawsuit involving the DWP is over.
4 folks, together with three prime metropolis staff, pleaded responsible to varied crimes in a scandal centered round a 2015 class-action lawsuit filed by DWP prospects.
Prosecutors stated that an lawyer working for Feuer’s workplace wrote the lawsuit after which handed it to an opposing lawyer, who filed it in opposition to the town.
The objective was to rapidly settle quite a few claims filed by DWP prospects, who had been grossly overcharged by a brand new billing system, prosecutors stated.
A number of people, who go unnamed in prosecutors’ court docket paperwork, had been alleged to have identified about or taken half in varied schemes, however weren’t charged.
Extra questions had been raised when one-time lawyer Paul Paradis, who ghost-wrote the lawsuit filed in opposition to the town and admitted taking a kickback, informed a federal choose in November that an FBI agent testified in two affidavits that Feuer perjured himself earlier than a federal grand jury. Feuer additionally made false statements to the FBI, Paradis stated.
Feuer has lengthy denied wrongdoing. Reached Wednesday, Feuer pointed to the letter that he was despatched in 2022 by the U.S. lawyer’s workplace which stated he wasn’t being investigated.
“That letter continues to talk for itself,” stated Feuer, who declined to say whether or not he helps or opposes the trouble to unseal the paperwork.
The appliance filed by The Occasions and Shopper Watchdog additionally says the paperwork are “important” to “monitor the charging choices” of the U.S. lawyer’s workplace.
“The general public has a robust curiosity in assessing why prosecutors made the restricted charging choices they did,” the appliance says, “significantly the place these choices had been made about extremely influential and highly effective public officers who weren’t charged, whereas decrease rating officers had been charged.”
Attorneys for the 2 entities started assembly with the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in January to debate entry to the paperwork.
The method was nonetheless underway final week, however “sadly, we weren’t capable of attain an settlement,” Flanagan stated.
Thomas Mrozek, a spokesperson for the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in Los Angeles, declined to remark.
Mrozek informed the Occasions final 12 months that prosecutors didn’t pursue prison costs within the DWP and metropolis lawyer’s workplace case when the “proof didn’t set up each factor of a federal offense past an affordable doubt.”
