death of a story

an explosive detail came out recently involving a prominent LA democrat, but is it dead on arrival?

LA city hall with the city attorney’s office behind it.

Last week the final criminal defendant tied to the corruption in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the City Attorney’s Office was sentenced to prison. Four convictions later, it’s all over as far as the U.S Attorney’s Office is concerned.

I’ve covered this saga for seven years, back when it was another routine class action that reporters only covered when they were sent a press release. But then came the plot twist revealing that a city lawyer represented both sides of the billing lawsuit. When the FBI raided the city attorney’s office and DWP in 2019, it felt like things were happening. Then came convictions. It seemed like with every story over the past 4.5 years, the LADWP saga was reaching a boiling point. But it never quite spilled over into an issue that the local media and the public really cared about. Mostly the LADWP corruption story was seen as a UFO. You knew it was fishy, but you didn’t quite know what it was all about. Some guy got bribed. It involved Mike Feuer. The city sued itself. What?

But this past week, as former city of LA private counsel Paul Paradis had the book thrown at him by the judge for his involvement in multiple bribery schemes with city officials, Paradis said something crazy. And it made this whole convoluted story easy for everyone to care about. Paradis told the court that then-City Attorney Mike Feuer committed federal crimes.

Paradis alleged, with specific detail, that an FBI agent named Andrew Civetti said in an application for a search warrant signed off by a judge that Feuer lied to a grand jury when he testified that he didn’t know about a December 2017 extortion payment order handed down from his office that was aimed at burying litigation collusion. Paradis also said Feuer lied in a civil deposition about when he knew about the overall collusive litigation scheme, in which the city attorney’s office conspired with opposing counsel for LADWP ratepayers and sued itself as a way to dismiss several other billing lawsuits the city was facing. All of this was to protect the king and his ambition to become mayor.

But Paradis is under a protective order and can’t share documents the government gave him pertaining to their investigation. It’s likely that affidavit is locked down under that seal. I previously speculated about what the government could be hiding, and now we know more.

The FBI saying Feuer lied is huge. And you’re just going to have to trust me on this one. First, it goes against everything Feuer has said publicly over the past several years about his knowledge of what went down. And lying to a grand jury would be a very, very gutsy move on Feuer’s part. He definitely knew about the extortion payment. Two, this is a massive embarrassment for the righteous U.S Attorney’s Office, which ended its investigation without prosecuting the powerful politician most responsible.

But the detail was barely news this last week. Instead, it was buried far after the lead in the Los Angeles Times and a City News Service story that got legs on the wire. The stories in the local LA press focused on the fact that Paradis went to jail, which, I know is the most obvious news hook. But they focused on the pawn instead of the king. Meanwhile, the other scant coverage didn’t mention what Paradis said about the grand jury detail at all.

I know it’s a very spicy detail that reporters on deadline can’t verify. But if you look closer no one has called Paradis a liar. Not the U.S Attorney’s office, not Feuer, and not the judge. Actually, the judge seemed to confirm what Paradis said because right after Paradis said it, the judge replied, “I have reviewed carefully the papers.”

But there is a lot of context missing as well from coverage. The puzzle pieces are all there that make a heavy circumstantial case that Feuer at least knew about the 2017 extortion payment, in which then-outside city counsel Paul Kiesel was ordered by senior city attorney officials to pay nearly $1 million to bury the collusive details of the city’s involvement with the LADWP billing lawsuit. Kiesel, meanwhile, is considered a “victim” in the eyes of prosecutors, despite being part of and helping cover up the collusive lawsuit. If he’s a victim—an argument government attorneys often use to keep documents hidden—then just imagine what else the government is hiding.

Prosecutors cited, but have not charged or named, the “senior member” who authorized the collusive lawsuit, and the “senior members” who ordered the subsequent extortion payment to conceal it. Public records show Feuer was calendared for the 12/1/17 meeting in which prosecutors say the extortion payment was ordered. A text message from Peters to Paradis following the meeting says, “Mike is not firing anyone at this point. But he is far from happy about the prospect of a sideshow.” I’ll let you decide who “Mike” is. However, prosecutors, acting more like defense attorneys, also quote from that text message in their sentencing papers, but leave “Mike” out. Here it is:

government docs referencing extortion meeting text. they leave out “mike.”

but here’s the full text, which was entered as a court exhibit.

But no story has mentioned the text message and the government’s censoring of Feuer’s name. Feuer committed a federal crime and prosecutors are protecting him. It’s so fucked. People distrust government and institutions for exactly this reason, because the powerful and privileged get away with it, while regular people don’t.

Will Paradis’ explosive disclosure ever be verified, or is he taking it to jail with him? I don’t think it’s over. Over the past few years, the news latched onto the story for a few minutes until it got swept away by the next Twitter calamity, which was usually something involving identity politics, faraway wars that don’t affect us, or what Taylor Swift is doing. There haven’t been any op-eds, or a single LA Times editorial about LADWP. It’s very odd given the attention the organization has given to the rampant corruption coming out of LA over the past few years. A black man got ripped off by a bunch of white government lawyers, and it’s cost taxpayers over $200 million dollars and years of litigation. And the State Bar hasn’t done anything in over 4 years except talk about it.

Again, this story isn’t about Paul Paradis being the worst guy to ever step foot inside a city conference room. It’s about the former City Attorney getting away with committing federal crimes and prosecutors helping him do it. So I don’t know, get used to calling him Congressman Feuer lol. I guess we deserve it.