michael libman versus the world

many ladwp characters have kept a low profile. not michael libman.

Earlier this year, valley attorney Michael Libman sat down inside a downtown Los Angeles courthouse to answer questions about his finances. Two years ago a judge ordered him to return $1.65 million in attorney fees for representing incorrectly billed Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers in the messy Jones v. City of Los Angeles lawsuit. The judge, a stoic man named Elihu Berle who fully reads his rulings from a piece of paper on the bench, also found Libman in contempt of court and sanctioned him $160,000. Berle said Libman never told his client, lead plaintiff Antwon Jones, that Libman had an adverse relationship with opposing city counsel. Actually, the judge said Libman never even talked to his client, period.

“Libman never communicated with Mr. Jones; had no attorney-client agreement with Mr. Jones,” said Berle in 2021.

Libman’s only role, the judge said, was filing the lawsuit, which was written and sent to him by his city opponents, according to court records. That lawsuit and settlement has been described by federal prosecutors as “collusive,” and “a sham,” leading to two former city lawyers pleading guilty to felonies. Libman’s co-counsel, Jack Landskroner, kicked back $2.2 million in fees to former LA special counsel Paul Paradis. Libman, who said he didn’t receive any illicit payments or know about them, has not been charged.

But he has not complied with the judge’s order. Which brings us back to the downtown LA courthouse, where his debtor exam took place (a debtor exam is a way of obtaining information about a person’s finances.) After confirming his name to Kabateck LLP partner Shant Karnikian, Libman pleaded the Fifth Amendment Against Self-Incrimination. And he continued to plead the 5th when asked if he had an alias, a cellphone, and where he was born.

By his side was Stephen Yagman, an irascible civil rights attorney from Brooklyn who served jail time for bankruptcy fraud and tax evasion. Yagman has sued the LAPD many times, as well as secured due process rights for Guantanamo Bay prisoners during the War on Terror years. At nearly 80, Yagman was back in the courtroom, representing Libman.

“Let the record reflect Mr. Libman is now playing with his cell phone,” said Karnikian.

“Let the record reflect that you're a jackass,” shot back Yagman.

“Okay,” responded Karnikian.

The debtor exam ended shortly after that. On March 29, the parties returned and Libman asserted his 5th Amendment rights again, multiple times. He is the 5th figure in the LADWP corruption saga to plead the 5th following former city lawyers Thomas Peters and Paradis, former DWP General Manager David Wright, and Jack Landskroner, the former class counsel of record for ratepayers. Every one of them except for Landskroner, who died in 2021, pleaded guilty to crimes in-connection with the lawsuit and LADWP. But Libman’s situation is a little different. It doesn’t necessarily mean he is hiding criminal conduct by pleading the 5th.

“It’s extremely rare in civil cases,” said Karnikian. “In this case though, it’s not rare. It’s just a delay tactic. He might think the joke is on us and the class but justice will prevail.”

But Libman hasn’t really stayed quiet. While others flipped to cooperate with federal prosecutors, or simply shut the fuck up for good, Libman has mounted a Logan Roy-style, spray-the-bullets-everywhere assault against his opponents, real or perceived. He took the red pill a long time ago, calling out his replacement attorney as the real bad guy. Libman said ratepayer attorney Brian Kabateck, city private counsel Eric George and former City Attorney Mike Feuer are, “three friends who decided to take my money.” He accused the judge of bribery to his face, saying Berle bought a house in cash as soon as money for the Jones settlement funded. He filed a massive civil rights lawsuit, suing everyone from United States Attorney General Merrick Garland on down. Federal prosectors, FBI special agents, the city of LA, and the judge were just some of the over 20 named defendants. He’s either ballsy, just, wildly foolish, or all of the above.

“Libman is this rogue character,” said Karnikian. “If he is pleading the 5th he should have pleaded 5th in beginning. Now he has this massive judgment and judge might come down on him for refusing to answer questions.”

Scapegoated?

“I don’t know who to trust anymore,” Libman tells me over the phone last year.

He’s demanding I take down an article I wrote about the sanctions ordered by the judge. Libman sees enemies everywhere. One time he interpreted a fax sent to him by his legal adversaries as Covid-19 bioterrorism. He said his wife was “the victim of an apparent assassination attempt.”

But it’s what happened in 2020 that really spooked him. On June 30th, just before 6 a.m., FBI agents in tactical gear carrying guns searched his Tarzana home. They were apparently looking for weapons and money, according to the search warrant. Libman said they destroyed his security cameras and dragged him outside barefoot in the middle of the street for the whole neighborhood to see, all while eating cupcakes and making vague references to being interested in his “cooperation.’”

At one point, Libman said an agent pointed a rifle at his young son, who was sleeping in his bedroom. The agents found nothing, according to Libman. Libman said he was unsuccessful in getting clarity on what agents and prosecutors meant by “cooperation.”

“It is self-evident that the primary goal of the government raid was not to search for any work product or evidence but to intimidate,” according to a civil rights lawsuit Libman filed related to the incident.

Libman contended the search was in retaliation for investigating the judge and Kabateck. His lawsuit quoted the search warrant as stating, “Records, documents, communications, or other materials from January 1, 2020, to the present reflecting plans to collect information about Judge Elihu Berle and Brian Kabateck or any existing collections of information about the same.”

In other words, Libman believes the raid was done in order to stop him from doing his job as an attorney and investigating what he describes as a conspiracy behind LADWP to rest blame on him and cover up LADWP billing problems.

In his lawsuit, Libman said the FBI and prosecutors violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful searches and seizures. A judge recently dismissed the last remaining defendants from Libman’s lawsuit. When I recently asked Libman if he was going to appeal, he declined to say.

“What I have said in my complaint in the case that was dismissed, I stand behind every word,” he said in an email.

According to Yagman, the basis for Libman’s 5th Amendment privilege is the federal government’s continued investigation into him.

“So it could expose him to the possibility of incriminating himself in that investigation,” Yagman told the judge in January. “I don't have any more information about it. I've tried to get information about the investigation, but it's been blocked by the United States Department of Justice.”

Libman’s salacious lawsuit also contended that the U.S. Attorney’s Office pressured Feuer to drop the city’s parallel billing lawsuit against PWC, in which the city sought to recoup losses it sustained in the Jones matter.

“Feuer improperly succumbed to the extortion and intimidation, to safeguard his hopes for a political future, and dismissed the city’s action, with prejudice, against PWC which cost the city of Los Angeles taxpayers and LADWP ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars in potential recovery from PWC,” wrote Libman.

But why would federal prosecutors be interested in having a lawsuit dismissed? Who would be behind that? The answer, according to Libman, is Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, that go-to law firm for the international ruling class who represents everyone from CNN, to Mark Zuckerberg and Chevron. Gibson Dunn is of course the firm representing PWC; the firm that uncovered collusion over the DWP billing settlement. It is also the firm that employed two associates who went on to prosecute the LADWP case for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in downtown LA, Melissa Mills and Mack Jenkins. Libman claimed it was Mills and Jenkins sought to get the city’s lawsuit dropped against their former employer’s client.

And during Libman’s own deposition taken by Gibson Dunn partner Michael Dore, a former AUSA in that same office, Libman said Dore threatened him with an FBI “investigation.” About a year later, Mills and FBI agents showed up at Libman’s door.

To go down the rabbit hole further, city officials who knew about the collusive litigation plan also have Gibson Dunn ties. Former Democratic Congressman Mel Levine, who was the president of the Board of Water and Power Commissioners, which governs LADWP, was simultaneously employed by Gibson Dunn as of counsel. And the second highest-ranking official in the city attorney’s office, Jim Clark, previously worked at Gibson Dunn for years. What’s weird is that both of them continued to use a Gibson Dunn email account while working for the city, according to court records. The Gibson Dunn connection is odd, but maybe more of an example of how power is incestuous and spreads its seeds everywhere. And for someone in Libman’s position, these details are hard to ignore.

“I have done nothing wrong”

In 2019 Libman told Judge Berle, “I have done nothing wrong at all. I had no conflict of interest from my perspective.”

A court-appointed investigation into LADWP saw things differently. It found Libman committed 10 State Bar violations, including those pertaining to conflicts and moral turpitude, the latter of which is grounds for disbarment.

“Mr. Libman violated the ethical rules against dishonesty, deceit, and collusion and violated his ethical duties to the court in violation of Rules of Professional Conduct,” found Ed Robbins, a former federal prosecutor who spearheaded the investigation.

“Although Mr. Libman was counsel of record for Mr. Jones in Jones v. City, Mr. Jones never signed an agreement retaining Mr. Libman as his counsel and did not know Mr. Libman acted as his counsel of record,” according to the report. Jones said he didn’t even know Libman.

“I did not see it necessary to communicate with Mr. Jones,” said Libman in 2019.

The report said Libman filed the Jones lawsuit at the direction of city lawyers Paradis and Paul Kiesel. Kiesel and Paradis say it was the city, not them, who ultimately authorized the sue-and-settle scheme.

The report also said Libman’s billing records submitted in support of his request for attorneys’ fees and expenses were “false and grossly inflated.” Libman entered the case just before it was filed on April 1, 2015, although his accounting hours dated back to November 2013, according to the report.

“The evidence is clear that, at this point in time, Mr. Libman was nothing but a strawman with the necessary California bar card so that Mr. Kiesel and Mr. Paradis could effectuate the collusive plan with the city to proceed with Mr. Landskroner as the “white knight” counsel for Mr. Jones in the filing of Jones v. City,” stated the report.

When I reached out to Libman recently to talk to me for this story, he declined, citing a “distrust” of me. I told him the raid felt excessive and that people deserved to know about it, and I thought it would benefit him tell his side of the story.

After I asked him about asserting his 5th Amendment rights, he wrote back to me one last time.

“You are obviously still Kabateck’s agent.”