Part 131: Mark Ridley-Thomas and David Lee Cases Appealed to a Higher Authority

Published November 21, 2024.

Nov 22, 2024

Photo of the Richard H. Chambers U.S. Court of Appeals Building for the Ninth Circuit in Pasadena, California, the former site of a hotel by author (Go Pro Hero 11 Black).

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

The legal table was set: two bribery-related cases, with a dash of old-fashioned, honest-services fraud to back the corruption cake. “Back-to-back appellate arguments in two (2) Los Angeles public corruption cases means a morning of must-see TV at the 9th Circuit,” declared journalist Meghann Cuniff on X, formerly known as Twitter. First up was the legendary politician Mark Ridley-Thomas, the embattled former City Councilmember AND County Supervisor beyond seats in Sacramento in both the Assembly and Senate. Supporters of Ridley-Thomas, who is perhaps the most well-known African-American politician ever to hold sway in Los Angeles, were certain to pack the courthouse, and so they did. Even the overflow chamber was done to just a few seats, plus or minus those from the firms representing Ridley-Thomas. More legal firepower may just be the answer to Ridley Thomas's prayer for relief from his 3.5-year prison sentence.

MRT, as he’s acronymed, was found guilty in August 2023 after a 16-day trial of “one count of conspiracy, one count of bribery, one count of honest services mail fraud, and four counts of honest services wire fraud.” Argumentation from attorney Alyssa Bell, a former public defender in the Appellate Unit turned Cohen Williams LLP partner; her webpage notes how she now “leverages her background” for her clients in order to “restore their reputation and preserve their interests.” Bell’s barrage that rather than engage in blatant corruption, Ridley-Thomas had sought to “avoid nepotistic optics” was almost downright convincing. Most-especially for MRT, not-the-least because his partner-in-crime, Dean Marilyn Flynn, facing a maximum of 10 years in federal prison, had gotten the proverbial slap on the wrist in pleading guilty “to one count of bribery” in exchange for “three years of probation, including 18 months of home confinement” and a fine of “$150,000.” That’s actually more than Ridley-Thomas raised for his legal defense, “$100,000,” but still well under the value of the two scholarships and faculty job he had sought for his troubled son, Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, who had a troubled stint in the State Assembly.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the case. However, the performance of Assistant U.S. Attorney Lindsey Greer Dotson came off as lackluster in contrast to Bell’s, even if it were legally sound. You get what you pay for in Los Angeles? To the extent that courtroom dates are as much about horseracing as they are actually legal logic in this day and age, Greer Dotson’s pleading that she had not just one case precedent to lean on but three more was perhaps the highlight of the Government’s pushback against Bell’s onslaught. Bell had told Los Angeles Times journalist Matt Hamilton before the proceeding on behalf of the “appeal team” the modern-day equivalent of a fairy tale in stating her optics: “Our job is to retake the narrative, to retell the story from Dr. Ridley-Thomas’ vantage point, and to make the world see the many ways in which the government took laws that never should have applied to these facts and contorted them to come up with a theory of prosecution that is the first of its kind.” Yes! That’s the full quote!

To be fair to the U.S. Attorney’s office, Greer Dotson defended her jury instructions well, because after all, at the District-level, it’s a jury that decides, verus a panel of judges, much less a full circuit. “I appreciate that,” said Circuit Judge Morgan Christen, an appointee of Barack Obama from Alaska, in response to Bell’s argumentation. Central to the Government’s case was the argument that Ridley-Thomas, in “funneling” a generous $100,000 of campaign cash through United Way after Community Partners had turned it down, was simply “willing to do business” with MRT and USC. Now, in fairness to the great University of Southern California, and keeping in mind that no one wants to be unfair to USC, the transaction violated University Policy against nepotism; indeed, as Greer Dotson noted, one employee had even lied on behalf of Dworak-Peck School of Dean Marilyn Flynn after being quite pressured to move the money through to seed Sebastian Ridley-Thomas’s planned research institute on African-American voting behavior. When is a bribe a bribe was the question? And when was it a “gratuity” that could be normally expected in line with doing business for the public as recently declared normal?

Thanks to a recent United States Supreme Court ruling penned by Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, “the court found that officials could be prosecuted for bribery but not for accepting gratuities for past favors if there was no evidence of an illicit deal,” as journalist Matt Hamilton recounted in the Los Angeles Times. Was there a deal? A “quid” in the quid pro quo that saw USC receive an amended contract for telehealth services from USC, "SOWK,” as we used to abbreviate it even after the school’s 2016 naming gift. If ever there was a Dean at USC who was good at dealing, it was Marilyn Flynn who had even arranged a naming gift for her Deanship from her school’s largest vendor, 2U Inc., to become the “2U Endowed Chair in Educational Innovation and Social Work,” winning re-appointment in the same year. Back to MRT though, even if his co-conspirator had pleaded out, was he in fact innocent, even technically?

As I’ve written in the past, MRT was the “Black Political King” of South Los Angeles, and so by refusing to accept his dethroning, he was no less “fulsome” in cooperation than Flynn. Federal prosecutors had written that, “Much like he did in his opening and reply briefs, defendant advances a factual narrative divorced from the trial record.” To be fair, because no one wants to be unfair to Dean Marilynn Flynn, or USC, the culture of favoritism was rampant at USC, which recently, even after Operation Varsity Blues exposed widespread corruption leading to a massive government case, is still grappling with a Los Angeles Times investigation into its VIP program. Who was MRT to think that he wasn’t a VIP? Moreover, even if Sebastian was underqualified for the non-tenured faculty job that he sought in addition to scholarships at both SOWK and the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, who doesn’t want to see more people educated? Isn’t that the goal of an educational institution like USC?

The Mark Ridley-Thomas brand was at stake, and even though Sebastian was going above his grade, nepotism might violate policy but at the same time not violate the law. That was Bell’s argument, and strangely enough, it just might work. Were Ridley-Thomas to somehow prevail, the next question would be if he were to somehow get his City Council seat back, lost now to Heather Hutt, who recently won re-election. MRT might not end up back in public office, nor is he compelled to cut a deal like Flynn, but if he’s guilty, does the punishment fit? The greatest mistake in this case might not be prosecuting MRT or Flynn, but in letting off the hook USC administrators like my former supervisor, Vice Provost Mark Todd, who directly supervised Flynn. The emails came up, but perhaps not like they should have, all which leads you to wonder if the U.S. Attorney’s Office put their best foot forward in a way that’s convincingly just, versus mere application of law. After all, we all deserve some discretion, like getting out of a speeding ticket.

In highlighting the still discussed relationship of this to Mayor Karen Bass, who accepted a similar scholarship as highlighted in Hamilton’s September 7, 2022 piece: “Karen Bass got a USC degree for free. It’s now pulling her into a federal corruption case,” which, in fairness to Hamilton, was undoubtedly devised by his editors. As Hamilton recounts, quoting Vice Provost Mark Todd’s email, the direction was pretty clear: “MRT has lots of discretionary money…He should give us $1M each year for three years,” floating putting MRT’s picture on the side of the planned mobile mental health clinic vans. No one ever said justice was supposed to be fair, but is it being unfair to Ridley-Thomas; moreover, should public officials be held to a higher standard than private university officials, who admittedly are awash in public funding? If Alyssa Bell’s job on behalf of the appeal team, different than his trial case lawyers and likely better, was to blur the line, she achieved that goal. Also questioned was the striking of two African-American female jurors, because we all know justice isn’t always blind. Whether the U.S Attorney’s office saved their case or not will be seen when the panel of the Ninth Circuit makes their decision.

Next up on the corruption docket, after two other cases sandwiched in between was developer Dae Yong Lee, who also goes by David Lee, who was found guilty after a 9-day trial in June 2022 of “one count of honest services wire fraud, one count of bribery, and one count of falsification of records in federal investigations.” Doing business with José Huizar was his mistake, and in contrast to 70-year-old Mark Ridley-Thomas, Mr. Lee, aged 59 of Bel Air, the latter has been more forthcoming. “Due to my greed and ambition, I did something I will regret for the rest of my life,” David Lee had told the court in 2023, which is far more fulsome than a single word presented in defense of Dr. Ridley-Thomas. Mr. Lee was without the supporters who accompanied Dr. Ridley-Thomas, and in MRT’s defense, he did the majority of the 20 charges made by the Government. MRT’s supporters in the overflow had laughed at the mention of the acquittals, with Circuit Judge Anthony Johnstone of Montana remarking in questioning deadpan, “Well he wasn’t convicted of that?” Lee had only a few supporters with him left in court.

Last July, when he was convicted, one had ripped the phone out of journalist Meghann Cuniff’s hand, remarking, “Look at your cracked, poor phone.” Cuniff remarked that it was “really really, really telling” about the mindset involved with corruption. After all, everyone thinks that they’re going to get away with the crime until its time to pay the fine, as the saying goes, and then suddenly everyone is totally innocent, like a newborn baby. Lee’s appellate defense presented by Ryan Fraser of Bienert Katzman Littrell Williams LLP was grounded in the idea that the jury had been influenced by social media when it heard about Lee being recorded by the FBI—that’s the good, old Federal Bureau of Investigation—when he spoke with co-conspirator Justin Kim. Moreover, it was “free speech,” an idea Circuit Judge Morgan Christen seemingly questioned as hypocritical on the face of it, quipping that he should have “suspected that he was being recorded” and noting in regards to the Huizar conspiracy that “a lot was happening at this time” quixotically. David Lee was sentenced to 6 years after federal prosecutors requested 7 years.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office had sought the same sentence for Mark Ridley-Thomas. Huizar is serving 13.5 years. His aide, George Esparza, who was pivotal in breaking open the case in regards to David Lee, will do probation time only after winning the equivalent of a golden ticket out of a federal corruption trial. Then Assistant U.S. Atty. Mack Jenkins had said at the time about Lee’s conviction: “We think future criminals will take note of that” in regards to the idea of deterrence.” Since promoted to Chief of the Criminal Division, Jenkins was on hand for both hearings on Thursday, November 20. Undoubtedly, the question of whether “deterrence” actually works in Los Angeles on corruption remains to be seen, and with public confidence in the justice system increasingly low, the City and County of Los Angeles just might be the best test tube.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania recently found that there is “withering of public confidence in the courts” in regards to the federal judiciary. Defense Attorney Fraser had sought to reference a recent ruling in Washington D.C., in relation to Donald Trump and social media impact on the jury. Undoubtedly, it’s not Trumpism alone that’s eroding trust in federal courts; in fact, as the Annenberg study found, “The percentage of Americans who express either ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ of trust and confidence in the judicial branch has fallen from 75% in 2000 to under 50% in 2022.” Confidence in the Supreme Court of the United States is even lower. Moreover, “A majority of Americans believe that the courts favor the wealthy and judges don’t set aside their personal political beliefs when making rulings,” with supporters of Ridley-Thomas in the overflow hopefully waxing that the politician might get off because all three circuit judges were appointed by Democrats. Perhaps the only saving grace of the Annenberg study was that people still have more faith in federal justice than Congress or the Presidency. Clearly, the erosion of law and order in America isn’t just a new phenomenon.

The collapse of Huizar’s scheming as part of the FBI’s investigation into City Hall corruption dubbed “Operation Casino Loyale” was effective, scoring numerous convictions and in some ways forcing corruption into light. Strangely, despite another major scandal occurring in the midst of Ridley-Thomas’s now 6-year FBI saga, just a bit longer than the former imbroglio, few have sought to relate the leak of LA Fed Tapes into either one of these matters despite them being discussed in detail in the recordings. Just the other day, a public speaker at the Board of Police Commissioners meeting demanded more exposures. How will we know when corruption is done in Los Angeles? Much less that deterrence is working. Nicola T. Hanna, who preceded current U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California E. Martin Estrada, now works for the firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. The pipeline between the public and private sectors for attorneys clearly is a weakness in the system; after all, it’s a free market, and the job is unelected.

Upon taking office, E. Martin Estrada told Los Angeles Times journalist Gustavo Arellano that, A lot of times, the DOJ likes to operate in obscurity.” He added, “And there’s a lot of mystery to the Department of Justice, but it’s important people know that we’re here as a check.” In the game of chess that is criminality, much less organized crime, corruption, the question of where the mystery ends has never been so mysterious. Thankfully, at least, there was one bit of good news on Thursday! Wildly unqualified Matt Gaetz has withdrawn as Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, in turn replaced by Pam Bondi, the former attorney general for the State of Florida. If all justice has become is ideology matched by money and power, we’ve got a tremendous problem in America, and that sadly seems to be where we’re heading. To his credit, E. Martin Estrada to date has been a highly visible and active guardian for the City of Angels, and we’re far away from Washington D.C., where one U.S. Marshal this morning suggested I head for career opportunities. Perhaps we’re just two swamps separated by some mountains.

The proceeding can be viewed on Youtube at Pasadena Courtroom 1 9:30 AM Wednesday 11/21