CommentsCORRUPTION WATCH-Despite the seven warrants for Councilmember Jose Huizar’s offices and home, the FBI will be blind to the vast never-ending multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise which is commonly called the LA City Council.
For more than a decade, the LA City Council has operated in open defiance of Penal Code § 86 which criminalized the city council’s vote trading scheme.
We know how to eradicate corruption at LA City Council, but the first step is admitting we have a problem and you may rest assured that the FBI will find nothing amiss.
Although every developer’s project which is placed on the City Council agenda passes UNANIMOUSLY all the time, law enforcement overlooks the vote trading system whereby each council member votes for each other council member's project in return for the others' votes for any project they place before the council. These law enforcement yahoos see no quid pro quo -- it is merely a coincidence that all projects pass unanimously. The chances of 10,000 consecutive votes being unanimous are about 1 in Infinity, but no matter.
So, What’s up with Councilmember Huizar?
We’ve seen this type of investigation. With Councilmember Richard Alarcon, we saw law enforcement focus on minutiae while ignoring the elephants’ looting the city treasury. Councilmember Richard Alarcon lived in the wrong part of the San Fernando Valley. His district was in the west part of the Valley where he owned a home, but he seemed to actually live in another house in the east part of the Valley. After Councilmember Richard Alarcon was removed from office, the illustrious and oh-so honest City Council President Herb Wesson, who does not even live in the Valley, appointed himself to serve out Alarcon’s term. In corrupt Los Angeles, no one took note of the fact that the councilmember who replaced Alarcon did not live in the district and that was the alleged basis for removing Alarcon from office.
The FBI Excels at Conscious Blindness
Interestingly, the FBI has never been able to uncover the extremely “secret information” that the LA City Council operates according to a criminal vote trading system. While the FBI can get seven search warrants for Councilmember Huizar, in more than 10 years it has been unable to find the LA City Clerk’s public web page which shows that City Council always approves each project UNANIMOUSLY.
So, What’s up with Huizar?
There are innuendoes of hanky panky in his attempting to keep the gravy train in the family by having his wife succeed him as Councilmember for Council District 14. Is this how far LA has fallen? The FBI overlooks a decade long multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise, but if Garcetti does not want Huizar’s wife to become councilmember for CD 14, unleash the warrants?
Why the Willful Blindness for a Decade of Criminal Activity?
Duh. Crimes pay. It’s not complicated. History shows that it is hands off the City Council’s criminal vote trading enterprise. Once the authorities admit its existence, which is like admitting that the sun shines during the day time, then it must arrest every member of the LA City Council. Even if the statute of limitations has expired for Eric Garcetti, the entire world will know that he was the architect of the criminal enterprise since he was City Council President in 2006 when Penal Code 86 criminalized vote trading.
The FBI Has Morphed into The Three Blind Mice
No one should be surprised that the FBI cannot find the City Clerk’s webpage and tally the corrupt votes since 2006. After all, it could not even find Dr. Christine Blasey Ford after she had testified before the Senate and had been on the national TV news broadcasts for weeks. In fact, we learn from the FBI’s Kavanaugh’s investigation that the department excels at not finding incriminating evidence. No one should be surprised after the FBI reviews all the documents at its disposal, it fails to notice that all the projects that Councilmember Huizar places on the City Council agenda are UNANIMOUSLY approved.
How the Criminal Vote Trading Scam Works
For the few who do not know how the vote trading scam works, here it is in a nutshell: Because each councilmember is required to vote YES for any project placed on the city council agenda, each councilmember can guarantee a developer that any project will receive unanimous approval. The concept which eludes the FBI is that the ability to guarantee a project’s approval means that a Councilmember can make whatever deal he/she wishes for whatever bribe he/she desires.
This One Stop Bribe Shop Is Great for Developers
Imagine how much it could cost them to bribe a majority of City Council members each time they wanted to break the law? Yikes. Holy gadzooks Batman – nothing would get built. The key to this smooth extortion-bribery system is that each developer knows that with his purchase of one councilmember, he gets a guarantee of unanimous approval.
Anyone who thinks that the FBI will ever notice the unanimous vote trading pattern at LA City Hall is truly living in LaLaLand. The maximum prison term per violation of Penal Code § 86 is four (4) years. Assuming only 1,000 votes per year, that’s 4,000 years for each councilmember. That ain’t gonna happen. In fact, no councilmember will ever serve a single day or a single hour in jail no matter how many billions of dollars are fleeced from the LA City treasury by the incessant corruption.
The FBI may uncover some misdeed with Huizar, but it will never find that Brett Kavanaugh drank a beer or that the LA City Council operates by a criminal vote trading enterprise.
(PS: Speaking of massive fraud, the new EIR for the Hollywood Community Plan Update was released this week.)
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. 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.
