Part 115: Kevin de León vs. Black Lives Matter Los Angeles – The LA Fed Tapes Win Again

Published September 30, 2024

Sep 30, 2024

Members of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles stand in protest of Kevin de León during the second Council District 14 debate by author (GoPro Hero 11 Black).

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

The Los Angeles City Council District 14 candidate forum on Wednesday, September 25 in El Sereno at the Naseong Korean Church, also known as the Los Angeles Christian Presbyterian Church, didn’t go to plan. Unlike the first meeting of the candidates for Council District 14, this time Black Lives Matter Los Angeles (BLMLA) showed up, and what had been scheduled as a two-hour event ended short of 90 minutes into it in disarray. Organizers hurriedly encouraged attendees to clear the spacious hall with cushioned pews out into the lobby and the parking lot, then off into the night. I had arrived to find incumbent Kevin de León in the restroom coiffing his waft of hair before facing off against challenger Ysabel Jurado. Once on stage, De León, who has adopted a dismissive attitude against his opponent, seemed more concerned with his social media production before immediately criticizing Jurado as a socialist who wanted to defund the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on hand.

As in the first debate held two weeks prior on September 11, in nearby Lincoln Heights, De León attempted to use the power of his incumbency to seemingly intimidate Jurado. Except this time it didn’t work. Not so much because of his fairly desperate display of machismo, but rather every time that he would start to speak, BLMLA would stand up and turn their backs to him, drawing the ire of other audience members.Led by organizers Melinda Abdullah and Baba Akili, it wasn’t long before De León attacked BLMLA as a “divisive force from outside of Council District 14.” For her part, Jurado attempted to walk a tightrope, condemning de León for his racism, saying, “Because love is what we need here, and the divisiveness of saying that some people are not CD14, that’s why I ran in the first place, and hate has no place here in our multiracial, multigenerational district.” The audience applauded to the sound of Jurado’s voice; still, despite her best attempts, the event still did not go the distance as the two rehashed policy differences.

In the end, debate organizers, after initially telling BLMLA not to distribute literature to those in attendance, chiding that they had already been warned, gave up on powering through the evident discord. Periodically, Latino audience members who still maintain loyalty to De León would yell at BLMLA to stop standing up and turning their backs, with a few yelling at the politician on state. Despite the LA Fed Tapes scandal, De León has refused to give up and resign in the face of 2 years of direct protest. Still a powerful figure in California politics, having once been State Senate Pro Tem before failing at runs against the late Dianne Feinstein for the United States Senate in 2018 and against Karen Bass and Rick Caruso for Mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, he continues to believe that he’s the best qualified to serve the district, which stretches from Downtown Los Angeles through the Eastside and up into hip Eagle Rock.

The scandal, named for the location where it occurred, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO (LA Fed), involves two illegally made recordings. When the event ended in disarray, Jurado’s campaign huddled and so did De León’s both upfront, with BLMLA standing in the center of the venue and the former President of the labor union, Ron Herrera, looming in the back of the room. Off to the side stood Los Angeles Times journalist David Zahniser, who is also discussed in the principal inflammatory recording. Looking almost bemused by the situation, Zahniser stood alone in the hall. I pointedly asked Zahniser why, as of late, the Times hasn’t reported on legal developments related to De León’s lawsuit against the two supposed leakers, Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez, former employees of the labor union. Zahniser, who covers City Hall, simply replied resolutely with a smile, “I don’t think that matters anymore at this point.”

What has been lost in all the response to the scandal has absolutely been the idea that this is race-baiting. De León had engaged in red-baiting in the debate prior, accusing the Democratic Socialists of America Los Angeles (DSA-LA) of being behind the audio leak. The LA Fed Tapes are often called “secret” in reporting. Race-baiting is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “the act of intentionally encouraging racism or anger about issues relating to race, often to get a political advantage.” Red-baiting is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as the following: “The act of attacking or persecuting as a Communist or as communistic.” This time, De León skipped the accusation that the DSA-LA was behind the leak, similarly voiced in La Opinión by also recorded compatriot Gil Cedillo, who has also sued the two alleged leakers. Neither lawsuit mentions the DSA-LA on any page in their filings to date. So there’s a case of saying one thing and doing another for self-interest by pointing the finger at those allegedly responsible for the leak instead of accepting responsibility for the offensive discussion recorded in the tapes to begin with. Cedillo is also directly suing the embattled labor union where De León, Herrera, and former LA City Council President Nury Martinez met on October 18, 2021, and were recorded saying offensive and corrupt material in a more than 90-minute discussion.

In response to Kevin de León securing an order to go to jury trial in June 2025, Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez again deny any responsibility for the leak in their latest filing in Los Angeles Superior Court. The accused leaker, Santos Leon, former Director of Finance to LA Fed President Ron Herrera, is represented by attorneys Martin R. Berman and William W. Bloch. In their “Answer” filed on September 18, attorney’s Berman and Bloch cite seventeen different articles in “Affirmative Defense” of their client. “TO ALL PARTIES AND THEIR ATTORNEYS OF RECORD COMES NOW Defendant SANTOS LEON (“Defendant”), and answers the unverified Complaint of Plaintiff KEVIN DE LEON, an Individual, on file herein for herself [Vasquez], and denies, and alleges as follows.” Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez are married, but represented by different counsels. The seventeen articles that follow assert that De León firstly has no proof and that, secondly, he’s suffered any loss: “Plaintiff voluntarily and knowingly participated in conduct which constituted a legal consent. In the “FIFTEENTH,” they write, “Any recovery on Plaintiff’s Complaint is barred by the doctrine of unclean hands of Plaintiff.” In prior anti-SLAPP filings or strategic lawsuits against public participation, Berman and Bloch argue that Santos Leon is the victim of a conspiracy by the California Attorney General’s Office and the LAPD.

The “SEVENTEENTH AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE states that Santos Leon “believes, and upon said information and belief alleges, that Plaintiff’s claims are barred due to fraud and/or misrepresentations (whether intentional or negligent) perpetuated by Plaintiff/or her [sic] agents.” Leon’s attorneys request dismissal, no damages, and that they be “awarded attorney’s fees and costs.” For her part, Vasquez, the one-time secretary to Ron Herrera, is separately represented by attorney Jeffrey E. Zinder, and in a shorter parallel filing, he argues that she “did not engage in any illegal activity as alleged and in particular did not have anything to do with recording the conversations in which the Plaintiff and others engaged in nor did she release any such recordings to any third party.” Vasquez’s attorney cites only 8 articles of “AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE.” The filing is similar to Leon’s but includes a “PROTECTED FREE SPEECH” item and cites an additional legal doctrine, that of “laches.” According to Cornell Law School, this is defined as “a doctrine in equity whereby courts can deny relief to a claimant with an otherwise valid claim when the party bringing the claim unreasonably delayed asserting the claim to the detriment of the opposing party.” In short, De León’s lawsuit is an after-the-fact act of conniving.

To read court documents in Los Angeles cost-effectively, you have to go to the courthouse. The systems weren’t working last Thursday, so I had to go from one courthouse to another, spotting Kevin De León’s attorney, Mark Geragos, walking in Downtown Los Angeles. De León wasn’t principally represented by Geragos himself to start, but rather attorney Kimberly Caspar at the firm Geragos & Geragos. The legal titan who recently joined in representing Hunter Biden ambled casually, not noticing me watching. The co-owner of Los Angeles Magazine, Geragos, and attorney Ben Meislas, acquired Los Angeles Magazine in December 2022 along with two other publications for an “undisclosed price”. Meislas vowed at the time, “I am looking forward to pursuing a new vision for these magazines to become a [sic] trusted sources of information and unifying forces in the community,” according to the report by journalist Michele McPhee. In its coverage at the outset in October 2022, the publication had speculated that the leaker of the LA Fed Tapes might be DSA-LA Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, disgraced Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas, or an operation by rival labor union SEIU through the use of a “mole” in stories by journalists Jason McGahan and McPhee, both veterans of their trade.

Former Councilmember Gil Cedillo, recorded on the LA Fed Tapes, would tell the pair at the time, “To me, everything at SEIU is 100% suspect. I know this stuff." Cedillo would later accuse a multitude of LA figures, telling La Opinión journalist Araceli Martinez Ortega in October 2023, a year after the scandal: “It is important for people to know that the daughter of the owner of the LA Times, Nika Soon-Shiong, is part of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to which Councilmembers Eunisses Hernández, Nithya Raman, and Hugo Soto-Martínez belong.” He would further state: “The DSA has about 200 activists in Los Angeles, whom he describes as children, children of wealthy heirs with their futures secured in trusts like Soon-Shiong herself, and they only have about five people of color, Hernandez, Raman, Soto, and others like Isaac Bryant.” Cedillo’s lawsuit against the now-alleged leakers Santos Leon and Vasquez, the two former employees of the LA Fed, with Santos being terminated after being reportedly accused of the leak directly before termination, will be back in court on October 29 at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse.

The suit is also filed against the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO (LA Fed), itself, a much mightier opponent. Asked for comment, a spokeswoman for the LA Fed stated: “The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor does not comment on pending litigation or investigations.” She further wrote in an email response, that “Currently, the LA Fed is squarely focused on uplifting union members, unionizing Los Angeles, and abolishing the poverty and homelessness crisis." The LAPD investigation into Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez was originally returned for further investigation for having reportedly relied too much on the LA Fed’s internal investigation, which according to one source formerly within the labor union, close to the leadership, did produce an actual report. It’s unknown who the vendor was, and the LA Fed has refused to identify which investigation firm was hired to produce the report that implicated Santos Leon as the leaker.

In fact, in the original reporting from Los Angeles Magazine journalist Michelle McPhee, former President Ron Herrera’s executive assistant Karla Vasquez, who was reportedly well-liked, is simply an unwitting party to the production of the two leaked recordings. The now infamous recording on the Mark Ridley-Thomas bribery scandal and redistricting made on October 18, 2021, and a second leaked recording made on September 30, 2022, after the first recording had begun to be posted. To her credit, McPhee has continued to report on the civil court proceedings, unlike the Los Angeles Times as of late, which won Pulitzer Prizes for Breaking News Reporting for their coverage of the aftermath. Last winter, the Times was rocked by allegations that billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong had overstepped his authority in meddling in news coverage related to fellow medical device billionaire Gary Michelson in relation to a lawsuit involving his dog biting a woman. The matter made headlines as far as the New York Times, and helped lead to the resignation of top editor Kevin Merida amidst controversy. Merida would say about the move, “I came to my decision based on a number of factors, including differences of opinion about the role of an executive editor, how journalism should be practiced and strategy going forward.” McPhee’s two articles as of recent on the civil case proceedings, make no mention of Santos Leon’s defense that he’s the target of a conspiracy, instead focusing on the idea that there’s been “illegal activity” and “illegal conduct.”

Yet to date, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto has yet to actually prosecute Santos Leon and/or Karla Vasquez, with District Attorney George Gascón declining to press charges last May. The DA is discussed in the recording by De León, Cedillo, Martinez, and Herrera, about the controversial, liberal-leaning DA, himself fighting for re-election, with Martinez saying about Gascon: “Fuck that guy. I’m telling you now, he’s with the Blacks.” Most famously, to the chagrin of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, De León compares the adopted son of Councilmember Mike Bonin to a “Goyard bag or the Louis Vuitton bag,” a token item. While the public conversation to date has revolved around the explosive racism on the recordings, little attention has been paid to the political aspects of the recordings, especially in the context of an election, outside of the two civil case lawsuits, which describe it as an “October Surprise.” The two LA Fed Tapes, the product of a year-long plus surveillance operation, were leaked on Reddit beginning September 19, 2022, by username “Honest-Finding-1581” with a note entitled “LA County Federation of Labor Scam.” According to the DA’s charge sheet, both the Reddit account used to post the materials, and the Twitter accounts used to disseminate them to Los Angeles Times journalists and Councilmember Soto-Martinez publicly, were in turn created by a Google Gmail account “laupolitic@gmail.com” that tracked back to Leon and Vasquez’s residence “IP address.”

It’s not impossible, though, to manipulate Internet Protocol addresses through an act known as spoofing. According to the widely used security software company Cloudflare, spoofing is the act of “the creation of Internet Protocol (IP) packets which have a modified source address in order to either hide the identity of the sender, to impersonate another computer system, or both.” Without further linking Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez, this evidence alone is not sufficient evidence to convict them of a crime. A skilled hacking professional would have no difficulty locating his residence and even his IP address, and most especially if they had already gained access to the LA Fed’s computer networks and if Leon, and/or Vasquez ever worked from home, as both described during the COVID-19 pandemic in their filings. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto has yet to charge either individual with any crime; they simply remain under investigation, in legal parlance “under review.” No written analytical evidence from writing comparison has emerged that connects Santos Leon or Karla Vasquez as being the authors of the Reddit note posted with the recordings, nor have they in any way confessed to the acts.

Black Lives Matter was furious at Kevin De León over the scandal, camping out at his house in protest. I knew BLMLA was coming to the second KDL vs. Jurado debate from the red “X” placed across KDL’s picture on their Instagram earlier that day. Usually, when I bring up the University of Southern California (USC) in relation to the recordings, people ask me what USC has to do with it? The university was at the center of the scandal engulfing Mark Ridley-Thomas, and its top official for University Relations, Senior Vice President Samuel Garrison, and his father, a retired insurance industry executive, and prodigious political donor, including to De León and Cedillo, among others, appear conspicuously on the recording at 13:44, having spoken with De León before the infamous meeting. “So I talked to Sam Garrison the other day, who is the GR [government representative], he reports directly to Carol Folt,” De León says to Martinez, Cedillo, and Herrera. Nury Martinez responds, “The son of Jim Garrison?” De León replies to Martinez, “Yeah, the son of Jim Garrison. He told me that a couple of reporters got Pulitzer Prizes.”

Martinez is suspicious of De León, having been targeted by the LAPD’s union over her proposal to reduce their funding after the George Floyd protests. Caruso, a former President of the Board of Commissioners of the Los Angeles Department, was supported with millions of dollars in attack ads in relation to the Ridley-Thomas scandal that embroiled USC Dean Marilyn Flynn as well as my former supervisor, Dr. Mark Todd, Vice Provost for Academic Operations. Martinez asks De León, “For the investigation? To which he replies, “For the investigation. That what they’re doing has legs, just keep it going, just keep it going, just keep it going.” Martinez then loses her cool, and denounces David Zahniser of the Los Angeles Times in an angry rant. On August 18, 2022, I had observed Samuel Garrison speaking at USC, at one point he interrupted himself as if repeating the conversations of others, mouthing, “Nobody gives a fuck what you think.” Weeks before, Garrison’s assistant, who had worked for Flynn, had come to my office acting quite suspiciously, with a contract to hire the current head of KUSC classical radio, questioning my loyalty to the university. At the debate, I suggested to Black Lives Matter Los Angeles protestors that they were the victims of race-baiting by Caruso, the more I spoke, their faces dropped, before one young man cut me off, “Don’t police the black community.”

Outside, Ron Herrera gave me a dirty look, realizing that I was filming him exiting. I continue to believe not only that Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez are innocent, but in fact that they are victims of a political conspiracy orchestrated by Garrison on behalf of then candidate Rick Caruso with his knowledge. Caruso blamed Karen Bass’s camp in Vanity Fair in an interview with journalist Joe Hagan, saying he “suspected’ her supporters were behind the leak and blaming “identity politics, pure and simple,” for support among “younger liberal voters.” Caruso would try to spin the leak as the result of corruption in the city’s Democratic establishment to his advantage, demanding Bass renounce Martinez and LA Fed’s endorsements, saying, “The entire situation shows that city hall is fundamentally broken and dysfunctional.” Including largely his self-funded mayoral campaign, Caruso has since 1998 spent $107,357,594 dollars, including $50,000 to oppose DSA-LA Councilmember Nithya Raman in the recent primary. Following her election, Jim Garrison donated $1500 to Karen Bass, having given more than $44,025 in total.

Both Jim Garrison and Sam Garrison gave money to former Councilmember Martin Ludlow in 2002 before his election to City Council representing the 10th district that Ridley-Thomas would occupy before being removed from City Council after the USC scandal. On the main recording, about Ludlow, who resigned in 2005 to join the LA Fed, Ron Herrera says: “You got a handler for it, but you know, Gil lived through this. Martin Ludlow. Martin Ludlow. They weren’t after Martin. They just said OK, fucker. You want to be that way, bam.” Garrison would work for Ludlow as his Communications Director after serving politicians like Dianne Feinstein and Adam Schiff. In the Reddit note, the leaker “Honest-Finding-1581” writes midway: “Martin Ludlow gets multiple contracts with the LA fed. Remember him? He and Miguel Contreras were investigated for fraud and Contreras would have gone to jail if he didn't die first.” The leaker openly endorses Rick Caruso, writing “If Rick Caruso wins the Mayor's race, he will clean house at City Hall, including making sure Nury Martinez is out. That would put [Justin] Wesson out of a job. So, the LA Fed is putting all it's money in Karen Bass's campaign.” The then Chief of Staff to Herrera, Justin Wesson, was the son of former LA City Council President Herb Wesson.

In a leak investigation, the most important element is to establish motive, and one way to do that is to meaningfully connect the same individual from the recording to the text to establish authorship. In fact, our leaker “Honest-Finding-1581” seemingly challenges us to do exactly that task! “Connecting the dots,” in intelligence analysis, as outlined in Gheorghe Tecuci, Director of the Learning Agents Center at George Mason University, writes in his 2023 book with colleague Prof. David Schum, Critical Thinking for Intelligence Analysts: Connecting the Dots, they write about the process: “However, it happens that the credibility attributes for real and demonstrative evidence happen to be virtually the same ones: authenticity, accuracy, and reliability.” The odds that I was simply mistakenly suspicious before the leak get lower the longer this goes on, and particularly now that the principal hypothesis that the LA Fed Tapes were the work of internal agents is being challenged as external by the accused. Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez have yet to speak to the media, preferring to let their court filings do the talking, but if they could speak openly, what would they say? What do they have to gain from arguing there’s a conspiracy, much less one being generated by the State Attorney General’s office, which is exactly what Leon has aruged in his defense? They could simply make a free speech argument.

That Attorney General Rob Bonta has failed to deliver on his promise of an investigation to at least affirm that the Los Angeles Council District maps are fairly drawn, and not on racial premises is problematic. Twice, pressed for comment, his office has declined to give any even as yet another election approaches with the lines in dispute. Many hailed the leaker as a brave whistleblower, but there’s no signs of that, nor do Leon’s or Vasquez’s filings make use of the word. They simply argue that they discussed the recordings, disputing that any recording software was found, and simply that Leon had a copy of the main recording from discussion. The absolutely worst thing here would be to jump to the conclusion that they’re guilty without any certain evidence of their guilt. The longer this goes on, the harder it becomes to ignore the connections between the recording and text. Simply put, who had the most to gain from the leak? Kevin de León’s spokesman didn’t return a request for comment in response to questions.

After the debate, all parties took to social media to share their own narrative of what had happened, and their future ambitions. Kevin de León’s Instagram post said, “Last night’s debate in El Sereno was an insightful and powerful experience.” De León didn’t mention the Black Lives Matter Los Angeles protest or reference the LA Fed Tapes controversy, adding, “Thank you to everyone who showed up in support—your presence reminds me why we’re fighting so hard for a safer, stronger future for all.” Ysabel Jurado’s Instagram post-debate Instagram post addressed the matter indirectly, speaking in support of racial and social justice, saying, “If elected, I’ll be the first woman to ever represent CD-14.” She continued, “That victory will be for every woman who was ever made to feel less than; who was interrupted, undercut, and told by men that they weren’t smart enough, worthy enough, strong enough.” Jurado further characterized De León as a “man who has his foot out the door.”

For their part, BLMLA said on Instagram, “We should be unsurprised that the ousted Labor Fed president [Ron Herrera] who hosted that shameful meeting where Latinx ‘leaders’ were conspiring against Black political power was there last night to support KDL.” They noted Ron Herrera’s presence, noting, “He has donated $900 to KDL’s reelection campaign, despite claiming to just be caught up in the leaked racist tapes scandal.” BLMLA was out knocking on doors in El Sereno the following weekend as part of the #KDLMustGo campaign, now including billboards in two locations.

Link: Black Lives Matter Los Angeles

Link: Inside the room: The entire L.A. City Council racist audio leak, annotated by our experts

Link: Cambridge Dictionary Definition of Race-baiting

Link: Gil Cedillo And De León Sue LA County Federation Of Labor Over Leaked Audio

Link: Merriam-Webster Definition of Red-baiting

Link: Cornell Law School Doctrine of Unclean Hands

Link: Cornell Law School Doctrine of Laches

Link: Los Angeles Magazine Gets New Owners—And They're Local!

Link: Is Hugo Soto-Martinez the Man Who Sprung the City Hall Leaks?

Link: Who Are the Key Suspects In Leaking the Racist City Hall Audio?

Link: Gil Cedillo: 'The audio scandal was fabricated to disempower the Latino community'

Link: EXCLUSIVE: LAPD Zeroes In on City Council Leaker