The Los Angeles Occasions and Client Watchdog requested a federal courtroom Wednesday to unseal proof associated to the felony investigation of former Metropolis Atty. Mike Feuer’s workplace and the Division of Water and Energy.
The Occasions and the buyer advocacy group filed an utility searching for to make public 33 search warrants, affidavits and different paperwork within the authorities’s case.
Jerry Flanagan, authorized director for Client Watchdog, mentioned the legislation clearly states the general public has a proper to paperwork when a authorities felony investigation has completed.
The 1,451 pages will shed extra mild on the scandal, known as an “extremely sordid affair” final yr by U.S. District Courtroom Choose Stanley Blumenfeld Jr., who’s overseeing the felony case.
The appliance, filed by The Occasions and Client 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 running in the March 5 election for the thirtieth Congressional District seat being vacated by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank). Feuer is among the many high fundraisers within the race.
Prosecutors final yr confirmed that their probe into illicit metropolis contracts and a sham lawsuit involving the DWP is over.
4 individuals, together with three high metropolis workers, pleaded responsible to varied crimes in a scandal centered round a 2015 class-action lawsuit filed by DWP prospects.
Prosecutors mentioned that an lawyer working for Feuer’s workplace wrote the lawsuit after which handed it to an opposing lawyer, who filed it towards the town.
The purpose was to rapidly settle quite a few claims filed by DWP prospects, who have been grossly overcharged by a brand new billing system, prosecutors mentioned.
A number of people, who go unnamed in prosecutors’ courtroom paperwork, have been alleged to have recognized about or taken half in varied schemes, however weren’t charged.
Extra questions have been raised when one-time lawyer Paul Paradis, who ghost-wrote the lawsuit filed towards the town and admitted taking a kickback, told a federal judge 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 mentioned.
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 mentioned he wasn’t being investigated.
“That letter continues to talk for itself,” mentioned 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 Client Watchdog additionally says the paperwork are “important” to “monitor the charging choices” of the U.S. lawyer’s workplace.
“The general public has a powerful curiosity in assessing why prosecutors made the restricted charging choices they did,” the applying says, “significantly the place these choices have been made about extremely influential and highly effective public officers who weren’t charged, whereas decrease rating officers have 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 mentioned.
Thomas Mrozek, a spokesperson for the U.S. lawyer’s workplace in Los Angeles, declined to remark.
Mrozek advised the Occasions final yr that prosecutors didn’t pursue felony prices within the DWP and metropolis lawyer’s workplace case when the “proof didn’t set up each aspect of a federal offense past an affordable doubt.”
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