the debaser gets its first legal threat

great news

As you might know, I love writing sentences. It may be nothing more than a compulsion. I also love writing about DWP. Recently, a lot of news has been breaking regarding this weird, long-running saga. Government criminal charges pulled back the curtain on a number of ridiculous things, including some fringe characters that otherwise would have hoped to stay invisible. One of those characters is William Funderburk Jr., a former commissioner of the Department of Water & Power, who sat on the board while it rubber-stamped multi-million dollar no-bid contracts and watched as the manufactured billing lawsuit that deprived DWP customers of fair legal representation turned into an absolute suck hole. To be clear, he hasn’t been criminally charged, but he’s lawyered up.

Over the holiday season, Funderburk’s white collar criminal defense lawyer emailed me, demanding a retraction for “false and defamatory statements” I made about Funderburk in a story I ran about DWP criminal charges. What follows is the lawyer’s really long email to me, printed in full, and my response.

Hello Justin.

I apologize for taking so long to get back to you in response to your reaching-out to my client, Bill Funderburk. A lot has been going on. Bill has spoken highly of you in the past. I've read your most recent article about the DWP matter in your publication, the Debaser.

what will happen next in DWP?

As you well know, there is no competent, credible evidence that Paradis ever bribed my client. The Paradis plea agreement clearly states that the allegations he makes are based on his own uncorroborated assertions of his own felonious intent and unilateral plan to, among many other more significant and lucrative things, keep my client happy. The plea agreement and Mr. Paradis' plea of guilty do not support your unqualified assertion that "In short, Paradis finessed a billing lawsuit against the city of LA, took a $2 million kickback for the job, and in the process, bribed Wright and another DWP board member in order to score a multi-million dollar contract, as government prosecutors have now teased out." Those allegations are unsupported by evidence and flat-out wrong.

Likewise, no prosecutor has ever said "[a]nother unnamed 'board member' who prosecutors say took a bribe from Paradis, may also be next to face charges." I am unaware of any time or anywhere the US Attorney's Office has said my client took a bribe from Paradis or anyone else. Rather, as stated above, Mr. Paradis asserted, without corroboration, in his plea agreement that he, allegedly, thought he was bribing my client. At most, this may indicate that Mr. Paradis was, allegedly, projecting his own corrupt motives and intent on my client. It may also indicate that, in a desperate attempt to save himself, Mr. Paradis was making wild accusations against others.

In addition, your unqualified assertion that my client took a "...bribe in which he took free legal work from Paradis..." is unsupported by evidence and false. If you think the uncorroborated allegations of a person who has admitted to committing multiple felonies in pursuit of a $30M payday constitute credible evidence, you are mistaken.

Finally, your assertion on December 7th that "I figured out that guy is Bill Funderburk" is false. In fact, as you well know, I informed the LA Times on November 30th, as reported on December 1st, that Bill was the commission member referred to in the Paradis' plea agreement. 

One last thing. Your gratuitous statement "Look at the way this guy smiles. It’s like a  Tim and Eric skit, but for real," is not only uncalled-for but especially cruel. You know that, in April 2020, Bill suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car crash. The blunt force trauma he experienced resulted in neurological defects: neuro-cognitive, behavioral, emotional and physical deficits. He has been under the care of physicians and in rehab for many months as a result of this. 

In light of the true facts of the matter, we demand that you publish a full and complete retraction of the false and defamatory statements you made about Bill in your December 7th article in the Debaser.

JLH

Jan Lawrence Handzlik • Handzlik & Associates APC  

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Hello attorney Jan Lawrence Handzlik hahaha,

Thank you for emailing The Debaser! But I merely stated what the Department of Justice said in a criminal information and plea agreement. And I gave Bill Funderburk an opportunity to respond on Nov. 30, before the Times' story, but never heard back. The information and DOJ's press release says, "As part of his plea agreement, Paradis also admitted to giving bribes to multiple LADWP officials, including an LADWP general manager and an LADWP Board member, in exchange for their help in securing a three-year, $30 million no-bid contract with LADWP in June 2017 for Paradis’s downtown Los Angeles-based cyber-services company, Aventador Utility Solutions.”

It's not indispute that that board member is Bill Funderburk, a public figure.

And I'm sorry to hear for the first time from you that Bill suffered a traumatic brain injury, but that photo I linked was taken almost two years before the April 2020 accident you said Bill experienced. It’s very dishonest. And that you think the link was "gratuitous" is your own reading of something I merely linked to.

If Bill would like, I'm still more than happy to include his point of view and publish his response to the DOJ, and his answers to my questions:

Did Paul Paradis do legal work for Bill Funderburk? Did Paradis get paid for that work separate and apart from Funderburk's vote for the $30 million Aventador contract?

Why would board member Funderburk take legal work from someone who had a contract pending before the board?

Why did Funderburk vote for the Aventador contract, which contained an inflated rate for someone who had a conflict and no IT experience to do the job? 

What's Funderburk's response to the special master court report this year that said people in the city attorney's office and the Department of Water & Power "knew most or all of this three-part plan" to file the collusive Jones lawsuit? Funderburk appears in the report, and Paradis said: "Maybe they have forgotten that Jim Clark directed the entire strategy after clearing it with Mike Feuer, Mel Levine and Bill Funderbunk [sic]? Maybe they have forgotten that we have numerous emails demonstrating that they are lying when they deny knowledge and participation in all of this?

Did Funderburk know the sham Jones lawsuit was going to be filed?

Has Funderburk been in touch with the FBI or federal prosecutors about all this?

And why would someone suffering from “neuro-cognitive, behavioral, emotional” problems remain a DWP commissioner, regardless of how these problems arose?

Thanks a lot,

Justin Kloczko

God, there is nothing worse than a polite mean person. It’s not like I was randomly quoting some anonymous Reddit troll. Funderburk’s real problem isn’t with me, but with the government. Or maybe himself. Having your feelings hurt isn’t grounds for defamation.

Should I put his email on a t-shirt?

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