how did mike feuer avoid prosecution?
ahead of tuesday’s elections, let's wildly speculate.
So Mike Feuer, that enterprising Harvard slacker, escaped criminal prosecution for the collusion and extortion that happened on his watch as City Attorney. This week we’ll see if he’ll move onto the general election for the 30th Congressional District, which roughly covers Hollywood to Pasadena.
The FBI conducted a search of Feuer’s office in 2019 related to the shady Jones v. City of LA LADWP billing lawsuit, and one of his attorneys later pleaded guilty to ordering an extortion payment to conceal its collusion. And although federal prosecutors say the attorney was acting on orders from a “senior official” at the city attorney’s office, and public records and text messages make it pretty obvious that Feuer at least knew about the payment, Feuer nor any senior official were charged. He said he never participated in such an extortion meeting, circulating a letter last year from the U.S. Attorney’s Office stating he is not a target in their closed investigation. Feuer now gets to walk around thinking he’s owed a national platform as a U.S. Congressman.
But the FBI determined in applications for search warrants that Feuer lied to the FBI and a grand jury when asked about the payment. Lying to a grand jury is a felony that carries a five-year prison term.
So how did Feuer get away with it? Was it politics, bureaucracy, prosecutorial hesitance, or all of it?
I heard when former Mayor Eric Garcetti was trying to get confirmed as ambassador to India, the DOJ in Washington told the U.S. Attorney’s Office in LA to stand down on sentencing the remaining officials in the LADWP scandal until his nomination went through. The Biden Administration has also kept an eye on the number of indictments of Democratic officials by the DOJ over the past few years. Former city councilors Jose Huizar, Mark Ridley-Thomas, as well as former LADWP executives and a member of the City Attorney’s Office have faced criminal prosecution from the DOJ. Another prominent Democrat going down would not be a good look, especially during such intense political times. So it could have been an intervention from somewhere high up.
Looking at it another way, the Washington intervention theory makes more sense if you look at the high-profile politicians whom prosecutors have already gone after. So what would stop them from getting one more? Plus it’s the City Attorney, the one person who should be following, like, all the laws. This would be a huge get and advance a lot of careers. Don’t prosecutors love public corruption cases?
Unless someone went over their heads. So who would pull that string?
How about Kamala Harris? Is that crazy to say? She’s obviously a big California Dem with deep ties to LA. Harris and Feuer did have a working history together. But would she really give a shit about Mike Feuer? What’s in it for her? Yes, she wants the support to be president, but she doesn’t need him.
There was a time when she did, however, and Feuer was there to help. In 2013, Feuer, who was running for city attorney, appeared at LAPD headquarters with Harris when she was California Attorney General for a press conference about reducing gun violence. The two worked on this issue together.
In 2012, Harris sponsored one of Feuer’s bills to combat the foreclosure crisis that spun out of the 2008 financial depression. Feuer was at the time a state assembly member.
When Feuer was city attorney of Los Angeles, he lauded Harris’ 2016 lawsuit against Southern California Gas Company, whose ruptured gasline in the San Fernando Valley caused the biggest methane leak in U.S. history. Harris was criticized for being late to the game, filing her lawsuit months after everyone else did.
"Attorney General Harris' action today is a significant step in the ongoing effort to hold Southern California Gas accountable, end this public health emergency and assure it never happens again," Feuer said in a press release from Harris’ office at the time.
When Harris became a United States senator, setting up a run for the presidency in 2020, it was Feuer who was eyed as her replacement for attorney general.
But after 20 years in politics, Feuer’s political career hasn’t gone to the next level. Harris of course is vice president but she too has fizzled out. Feuer now is running for U.S. Congress. He exited the LA mayoral race last year with barely two percent of the primary vote and a corruption probe that cast shadows over his tenure as City Attorney.
The fact that Feuer was even able to get that letter from the government saying he isn’t a target in their investigation speaks to his power and privilege. Any person couldn’t just call up the federal government and get that letter.
I don’t know how close Harris and Feuer actually are, if at all, but they both live in LA and run in the cult of elite legal and political circles. Feuer’s wife is an appellate judge. Harris’ is married to former Big Law attorney Doug Emhoff. Emhoff, who is Jewish, used to do pro bono work for Bet Tzedek, the nonprofit founded by Jewish lawyers. Feuer was director of Bet Tzedek between 1986 and 1994. That’s a long time. Did the two know each other? Emhoff said that his time there was “in the early 1990s.” So it looks like there was some overlap between the two.
Again, I’m only speculating. If the White House colluded, that’s circumventing the legal process, a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Or there’s the more banal, less brazen explanation, but just as infuriating. Between bureaucracy and prosecutors simply not wanting to cross an establishment LA Democrat, the case against Feuer fizzled out. There’s a lot of political ambition coming out of the Central District, and maybe some professional strivers didn’t want to shakes things up too much. By taking down the pawns, they just wanted to achieve the appearance of justice.
According to Paul Paradis, who was sentenced to almost 3 years in prison for his role, something changed inside the Central District. Originally Paradis said he agreed with prosecutors to plead to a lesser conspiracy charge, one with a low likelihood of incarceration. But a supervisor in the office rejected the agreement and said Paradis had to plead to a max 10-year charge, according to Paradis.
“Eleven months later we learned he lied,” Paradis told the court during his sentencing.
Apparently there was a change to DOJ policy that allowed for defendants to plead to a lesser charge, but Paradis was threatened with “60 years of charges.” Why?
Soon the lead prosecutor in the case, Melissa Mills, left for the private sector, and the investigation was over. I heard the FBI did its job, but it’s apparently unhappy that federal prosecutors didn’t do theirs.
Anyway, I’m shooting in the dark a bit, but it’s fun. None of this would be an issue if the DOJ did its job. We’ll see if more light will be shed when a judge hears a petition to unseal DOJ discovery in the case, but I’m not too optimistic.
Anyway, happy voting! LA Podcast has a good election primer if you’re looking to catch up on who to vote for.
Bye