Part 101: A Tale of Journalism in Los Angeles – Election Radicalism and Whistleblower Celebrations

Published July 27, 2024

Jul 27, 2024

First Gentleman Doug Emhoff and Vice President Kamala Harris appear with Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles at UCLA during a 2022 campaign event by Myung J. Chun (Los Angeles Times).

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

When I started writing in serial in November 2022, I had a few goals, but I never quite imagined where this would all lead. First and foremost, I continue to believe in our democracy and that hatred is less important than love, even as the latter has become something that is scarily more difficult to achieve than the former. Hatred is easy, a natural reaction, but real love takes fortitude, and so my hope was that by sharing my whistleblower story at USC of living political corruption and the erosion of civil rights, my sacrifice would not be in vain. Yes, by August 26, 2022, I believed firmly that an inflammatory audio leak was about to happen in Los Angeles, and only weeks later that exact scenario would unfold. I was also afraid for the USC community what perpetuating a culture of smoke and mirrors would mean for the home of the Trojans.

I still say “Fight on!” with almost annoying regularity. It’s something that comes naturally to me, and I always wanted to be a Trojan, even as I shied away from staying too close to home as an undergraduate. Prior to being terminated, I was asked by someone if “I could be trusted,” and I simply demurred at the question. Many who dislike the very idea of a whistleblower think we must be treacherous, even delusional. That’s not the case; this country needs brave people who are willing to tell the truth. So even as I’ve eaten the proverbial career bullet, I continue to believe that even in a place like LA, we still deserve to know the truth. Today, the case against the two supposed leakers of the LA Fed Tapes, former employees of the powerful AFL-CIO chapter, sits with the City Attorney’s Office of Hydee Feldstein-Soto, with District Attorney George Gascón having declined to pursue felony charges in what just might be the wildest political crime in Los Angeles history.

Eavesdropping and invasion of privacy are no joke! Alleged leakers Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez have studiously maintained their silence, declining through their attorneys to speak with the Los Angeles Times or prosecutors even as their home IP address has been reported to be integral to what is described as an “October Surprise.” A deliberate attempt to influence the outcomes of the November 2022 Mayoral Election, with a rematch between Mayor Karen Bass and billionaire developer Rick Caruso appearing to be on the table for November 2026 should Caruso not decide to make a run for outgoing Governor Gavin Newsom’s job, a monumental task. This week, in what might be the biggest political blunder of his governorship, as the state literally burned, Newsom pulled a Caruso, issuing an executive order declaring that homeless encampments be cleared.

Having finally, recently, fully swung from being MAGA-Lite to an allegedly genuine Democrat, Caruso, after having thanked President Joseph Biden, Caruso still wouldn’t just willingly get on the Vice President Kamala Harris train. In fact, on X, formerly known as Twitter (cue Elon Musk noises), Caruso wrote: “Vice President Harris may emerge as the best choice, but allowing an open process is consistent with the fundamental strength of our democracy and ensures a brighter future for all Americans.” Famously, back in the day, Caruso had called Democratic Congresswoman a curse word that I care not to repeat, and similarly, after the LA Fed Tapes leak, he had later told Vanity Fair reporter Joe Hagan that ““Karen ran on identity politics, pure and simple,” Caruso says. “The subtitle was, ‘I’m a Black woman, and it’s time for a Black woman.’ That resonated with a lot of younger liberal voters.”

Ever a scoundrel, Rick Caruso dodged requests for follow-up comments, and Mayor Karen Bass, who just might be the next Miss Congeniality, continues to tolerate his entreaties in the hopes that being nice just might get her and, well, frankly, Los Angeles out of another $100 million plus dollar advertising onslaught. In the same Vanity Fair piece, Hagan profiled former Knock LA journalist Cerise Castle, an African-American woman, who, commenting about Bass, said that she “never really said that she [Bass] was going to be an accountability figure for the LAPD. She campaigned on expanding the LAPD, on giving the LAPD more money.” So even as Bass gave a presentation on Los Angeles’s efforts as part of her “Inside Safe” program, which shows some limited signs of success, she rebuked Newsom with the New York Times, headlining the political showdown as “Clear Encampments? Mind Your Own Business, Los Angeles Says.”

I’m not sure that Karen Bass has no intentions of being an “accountability figure for the LAPD,” despite recently vetoing a proposed reform of the LAPD's disciplinary process, removing it from the November ballot. The measure had passed 11-3, with the Democratic-Socialists of America block voting against it, citing Bass’s shared concern about “ambiguous direction and gaps in guidance” that author Tim McOsker disputed. The Council will return from summer recess on July 30 and may override it, even as Council President-Elect Marqueece Harris-Dawson had been absent. No one really disputes that the current system for discipling LAPD officers, much less corrupt politicians, is broken, with it taking an extraordinarily long time to remove those found to have committed misconduct and a Board of Rights system that people don’t really believe has been reformed despite prior efforts. I haven’t been to City Council in a while, having grown a little bored of glaring at Kevin de León, who refused to resign following the LA Fed Tapes scandal, who, although not as odious as former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, makes for an easy punching bag.

Undoubtedly, Villanueva would have wanted a punching bag this week, having been the subject of a Los Angeles Times report by journalists Alene Tchekmydian and Keri Blakinger, to have targeted his critics, including Cerise Castle and Tchekmydian herself, as well as his own inspector general and a high-ranking aide. Those who have never had investigations loaded against them, much less being surveilled like LASD did to Castle as part of a more than 50-person operation, might not believe that such things happen in Los Angeles. The crazy part is that they seem to happen in Sacramento as well, and who knows about the FBI at this point? Whether the buck stops with the State Attorney General, Rob Bonta, who reports to Governor Newsom, or with new FBI Assistant Director in Charge for the Los Angeles Office, Akil Davis, it’s hard to say. The Times report highlights Villanueva’s response to the idea that he had zealously pursued a corrupt investigation: “We never presented the case to feds or the state, merely asked for their assistance.” That step, asking for assistance, has never happened with the LA Fed Tapes investigation, so who can say? But we’ll keep waiting to see if any transparency results from the investigative/prosecutorial process.

Truth be told, I don’t have a lot of confidence in City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto or District Attorney George Gascón, both of whom have shown a degree of fealty to Rick Caruso despite being our supposed top justice officials in Los Angeles County. Perhaps Davis can do what former LA ADIC Donald Always could not in quietly retiring last February and start restoring needed trust in Los Angeles. Bonta still has not delivered his promised investigation into the conversation illegally recorded about redistricting, even as he’s endorsed political candidates in the most distorted districts. Davis is a U.S. Army veteran having served in Afghanistan with the “U.S. Army’s 10th Special Forces Group,” the FBI SWAT Team in Los Angeles beforehand, and having held numerous posts concerning both organized crime and human rights, most recently serving as ADIC of the Bureau’s Phoenix Office, and before that as a Scottsdale, Arizona, police officer. According to the Bureau’s press release, he “earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California at Los Angeles and a master’s in educational leadership from Northern Arizona University.”

Akil Davis reminds me of someone I know from my USC days, Dr. Erroll Southers, the President of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, minus the overseas service. One morning as I walked up to the Bovard Administration Building on USC’s University Park Campus, I ran into Southers, who had recently assumed the job he still holds there as Associate Senior Vice President for Safety and Risk Assurance, telling me with a grin on his face, “Do you know what time I wake up in the morning?” After I was subjected to hostile termination in a retaliation scheme so spectacularly incompetent that, at least for one day, it completely backfired, USC eventually tasked Southers with overseeing the investigation that went on for nearly 10 months following my pre-termination report that I was being retaliated against for being outspoken and doing things that might actually make the home of the Cardinal and Gold change for the better.

Southers wouldn’t meet with me in person even as I repeatedly attempted to arrange one through email, deferring to USC’s policies and a private investigator, who sheepishly asked me about my report regarding the audio leak. He made sure that almost every box he could check to do away with the matter was done before dismissing it after I refused to further cooperate with an almost entirely opaque investigation. Southers conclusion was that my mental health was bad and that I must simply be imagining things about how Team Caruso operates at USC, much less in Los Angeles politics. Now Southers is tasked with leading the process to hire a new LAPD Chief following the supposed retirement of former LAPD Chief Michel Moore following allegations that he interfered in an LAPD Internal Affairs investigation into former Captain Cory Palka involving USC and sought to have Mayor Karen Bass investigated over her School of Social Work scholarship that she eventually managed to receive a Congressional Ethics Waiver to receive. Are Southers and Davis also on Team Caruso? Who can say? I certainly hope not, that would be truly disappointing.

Most alarmingly is the notion that both State and Federal law enforcement can be corrupted for political purposes in Los Angeles, much less the City and the County. This seemingly has happened if the Los Angeles Times and Castle are believed, and I certainly do! They brought the proverbial receipts. I wonder what my own “Description/Synopsis” would be as Castle’s story illustration highlighted: “Cerise Castle is the reporter of the KnockLA media outlet responsible for pushing out the LASD gangs narrative.” I never set out to push a false narrative, but I was no dummy, and I knew what I saw, heard, and believed was about to happen; so I countered. If former LA City Council President Nury Martinez, Councilmember Kevin de León, Gil Cedillo, and former LA Fed President Ron Herrera were in fact the target of a political hitjob rather than a noble whistleblower attempt to leak racist recordings, then the public has a right to know, and people should be accountable, no matter how rich or powerful.

There’s an old Japanese idiom that “the nail that sticks out gets hammered.” So as we edge toward not only the return from summer recess of the Los Angeles City Council but also the “11th Annual Celebration of National Whistleblower Day,” I know what it means to be “hammered.” The pending bipartisan celebration will be led by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, and Siri Turner, Executive Director of the National Whistleblower Center. President Biden is being urged to sign an Executive Order in support of the celebration, an act that might prove to be far more useful than Newsom’s fiat to suddenly clear homeless encampments. Protecting whistleblowers, much less uplifting the unhoused, might be an impossible task, but as the webpage notes, “the first whistleblower law was signed by the Continental Congress in 1778” - it’s about tradition! Moreover, “We can only root out fraud, corruption, and waste by addressing the culture that silences those trying to speak the truth.”

Los Angeles is a long way from Washington, D.C., and, in fact, a place I’ve never been privileged to visit. I still believe in American democracy. This despite former President Donald Trump, who led an insurrection following the 2020 election and who recently, in speaking with conservative Christian group Turning Point Action, declared about his candidacy, “You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what? it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” Is this guy serious? Trump is so extremely threatening that even gilded Rick Caruso is freaked out by his possible return to office! Caruso might not want Donald Trump, or Kamala Harris, for that matter, and his followers, including his right hand. James Samuel “Sam” Garrison may very well have been the ultimate leaker of the LA Fed Tapes, but I have to agree that an assassin’s bullet is not the solution to our Trump problem, just like a rigged investigation.

The First Amendment of the United States of America promises freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to peaceably assemble, and “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The fact that this is not happening so widely is a behemoth of a problem, and whether cults of religion or cults of personality, this press will be opposing the dark clouds on our horizon. Political realignment happens in this country at the ballot box, with free and fair elections, not with bugs and political violence. We’ve never been perfect, but we keep trying, and that’s the point, and as we face the foremost challenges of the 21^st century, whether pressing the reset button on our political culture or seeking to restore our decaying natural environment, I know that “Yes, we can” and “hope and change” were more than just lame political slogans, but ideas of community and of the peaceful preservation of democracy.

Corruption and illegality will not rule this land. Whether in secret investigation reports or 5-plus-year trials, the fundamental right to justice under the law is the truth that is self-evident. Even as prayers to the false Gods of money and power profligate and hatred fill the hearts of so many, you don’t need to have the booming voice of a guilty Mark Ridley-Thomas much less a nefarious Donald Trump to know that if in power, you shouldn’t be yelling and screaming at people while you stuff your pockets. Nor do you need to persecute people of different sexualities or deny people the right to dignified control of their own bodies and minds. We are better than that as a country! So I hope, dead reader, you’ll stick with this publication through thick and thin. Yes, sometimes it’s a lot to digest, but no one ever said this would be easy, and democracy is at stake, the truth must be told, even when it is inconvenient and upsetting to the established order of affairs.

Link: LA City Council racist recording case referred to City Attorney for possible prosecution

Link: Gov. Gavin Newsom issues executive order for removal of homeless encampments in California

Link: Rick Caruso X Post on Biden Re-Election Announcement

Link: Can Anyone Fix California?

Link: Clear Encampments? Mind Your Own Business, Los Angeles Says.

Link: Mayor Karen Bass vetoes proposed changes to LAPD disciplinary system

Link: Inside the Sheriff’s Department’s secretive investigation into Villanueva’s critics

Link: I wrote the history of LASD gangs. Then the sheriff’s department started surveilling me

Link: Akil Davis Named Assistant Director in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Office

Link: 11th Anniversary Celebration National Whistleblower Day - National Whistleblower Center

Link: Trump urges Christians to vote: ‘You won’t have to do it’ in four years

Part 101: A Tale of Journalism in Los Angeles – Election Radicalism and Whistleblower Celebrations

Published July 27, 2024

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