Part 173: The LA Fed Tapes on Appeal – Can the Watergate of Los Angeles Be Solved?

Published May 24, 2025.

May 25, 2025

Photo of former Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera seen rallying with former City Councilmember Kevin de León on March 30, 2022 (LA Fed).

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

The scheduled potential June jury trial for Kevin de León in his case against the two accused leakers of the LA Fed Tapes has been stayed pending appeal. Uncovered by the media, the latest filing is largely a rehash of prior proceedings last summer, during which defendants Santos Leon and Karla Vasquez failed to prevail in initial proceedings contesting the liability claim. The two former employees of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO (the LA Fed), perhaps the most politically powerful labor union in the City of Angels, have different attorneys representing them. Vasquez’s firm is currently working on a replacement following the death of attorney Jeffrey Zinder from natural causes. The matter pending now in the California Second Appellate District is case number B341428. Will it reveal any new facts, though?

Both Leon and Vasquez have strenuously denied responsibility for the recordings, which captured the prominent Kevin de León, recently elected to the Los Angeles City Council, in discussion with former City Council President Nury Martinez, former Councilmember Gil Cedillo, and the former President of the LA Fed, Ron Herrera, engaged in an inflammatory discussion about redistricting in Los Angeles and the Mark Ridley-Thomas criminal investigation. The MRT case is similarly pending appeal still before the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals after he was convicted of bribery, fraud, and conspiracy. Leon and Vasquez have been cleared of criminal responsibility by both the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office and the District Attorney’s office following a lengthy investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department. MRT was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and tried by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The appeal of the decision made last August in Los Angeles County Superior Court case 23STCV24461 by trial court Judge Stephen Pfahler, a double alumnus and former adjunct at the University of Southern California. Pfahler is also an author and a certified life coach, having been appointed to the bench in 2006 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The brief submitted on behalf of Santos Leon, represented by attorneys William Bloch and Martin Berman, dated April 23, 2025, argues that Pfahler erred in sending the case forward potentially to a jury trial that was set to begin in late June by “erroneously” ruling on an anti-SLAPP motion heard last summer that “‘preliminary [sic] establishes a valid claim of illegal conduct’ so as to destroy Appellant’s efforts to show that he engaged in any of the protected activities set forth in Code of Civil Procedure § 416.25(e), and to defeat Leon’s efforts to show that the anti-SLAPP law operated to protect him.” They claim that the accused only discussed the recordings.

An anti-SLAPP motion is a common legal maneuver designed to defeat a lawsuit on the grounds that it’s a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). Neither Leon nor Vasquez has made any claim to responsibility for the production or dissemination of the illegal recordings. For his part as respondent on appeal, Kevin de León is being represented by Kimberly Casper of the firm Geragos & Geragos despite attorney Mark Geragos having taken center stage in the prior proceedings.

Bloch and Berman write about his prior declaration, that Geragos “purported to have special powers to interpret the intentions and conclusions of the District Attorney’s office, with no showing of first person involvement in the examination of the computers, internet connections, or other electronic devices.” Geragos is accused of improperly acting as an expert witness “by submitting statements for which he lacks personal knowledge” and further by “attempting to render objectionable opinions without foundation which are clearly inadmissible.”

Critically, on the evidence in question, Bloch and Berman note that “The recording itself was never in evidence in this case, as no party attached it to any of the moving or opposition papers, and no party pointed it out as something to be judicially noticed. No mention is made of all regarding perhaps the most fascinating piece of evidence, the note posted on Reddit alongside the two recordings in segments by Honest-Finding-1581 entitled “LA County Federation of Labor Scam.”

Closer to the mark, Bloch and Berman argue that the complaint was “from a computer forensics expert, or even a cybercrime detective, tying Mr. Leon to the original recording.” The Eagle Rock home of Leon and Vasquez was searched by detectives from the LAPD Major Crimes Division in July 2023 after internal investigators employed by the LA Fed found that they were responsible parties. LAPD filed search warrants on the social media accounts used, including for Reddit, Twitter, and the Gmail account used to create them.

LAPD’s investigation was led by Detective Mark Seston and is now considered closed. The initial case submitted to then-District Attorney George Gascón by former LAPD Chief Michel Moore was initially returned over its reliance on the LA Fed’s unknown internal investigators. Both the LA Fed and the LAPD, in response to a California Public Records Act request, have refused to release the report that supposedly implicated Karla Vasquez and Santos Leon as the parties behind the leak.

Previously, a source within the LA Fed indicated that a written report does exist. Vasquez resigned her position in March 2023, and Leon, her husband, was terminated after turning “over both his Federation issued cell-phone and laptop for examination on or about April 26, 2023” after an alleged subpoena by the California Attorney General’s office, as claimed in the filing. The AG’s Press Office has denied that the probe into the city’s 2021 redistricting process announced after the leak has anything to do with a leak investigation.

Multiple sources within the LA Fed have indicated confidence that Karla Vasquez had no involvement, even as Santos Leon was described initially by journalist Michelle McPhee of Los Angeles Magazine as a stereotypical jealous husband. Mark Geragos co-owns the publication, with McPhee writing on July 21, 2023, that, So, it turns out that the biggest scandal to rock L.A. politics in a century involved matters of the heart, not politics.” This was the first occasion in nearly 9 months that the October 9, 2022 Reddit post was published after many months of headlines over the scandal that resulted in the Los Angeles Times winning Pulitzer Prizes for their coverage of the aftermath. The note published with the recordings is expressly political.

Leaker Honest-Finding-1581 writes, “If Rick Caruso wins the Mayor's race, he will clean house at City Hall, including making sure Nury Martinez is out.” The poster adds about former LA Fed Chief of Staff Justin Wesson, “That would put Wesson out of a job. So, the LA Fed is putting all it's [sic] money in Karen Bass's campaign.” Justin Wesson is the son of former LA City Council President Herb Wesson. Predictably, Karen Bass would go on to win the November 2022 election after vanquishing Kevin de León in the June 2022 primary, among others, and Caruso in November.

News coverage almost exclusively focused on the racist connotations of the recorded discussion, during which the parties engaged in backroom blundering conversation that was undoubtedly racially inflammatory. Little analysis has been done on the power relationships discussed, most particularly with USC, including official Sam Garrison, one of the few people on record having spoken with Kevin de León prior to the meeting. Garrison is a former employee at Caruso’s development firm and acted as his Chief of Staff at USC, including during the Mark Ridley-Thomas and George Tyndall scandals, both of which are discussed along with the fallout from Operation Varsity Blues and USC’s scandal involving its former medical dean.

At the time of the recording, the Mark Ridley-Thomas case was just brewing, and the release came prior to his trial, which resulted in conviction, and just after former USC social work dean Marilyn Flynn pleaded guilty to bribery. Asked for comment on the pending appeal of Ridley-Thomas before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office wrote by email, “We still await a decision from the 9th Circuit. Ridley-Thomas remains free on bail pending appeal.”

Ridley-Thomas isn’t referenced in the Reddit note, but a similar intimation is made about a corrupt relationship between the LA Fed and Los Angeles City Hall. Numerous mentions of other LA Fed employees are made, noting their hiring after service at City Hall by the labor union, yet one LA Fed source indicated that Santos Leon, despite being gruff, had no quarrel with the employees named while serving as Director of Finance except for routine disagreements with Justin Wesson. To date, Santos Leon has yet to sue the LA Fed.

His attorneys write, “Mr. Leon is outraged and believes that his termination of employment was also in violation of his First Amendment rights.” No mention of the alleged home IP addresses used to create the online accounts used to disseminate the recording. Both Leon and Vasquez worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic and occupied key positions close to Ron Herrera, with Vasquez serving as his reputedly loyal assistant.

The accused couple have both found new employment after the scandal despite their names being widely publicized by the Los Angeles Times, with the Associated Press hesitating to do so after they were cleared by the office of City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto in October 2024. The purpose of the appeal isn’t so much to further exonerate Leon and Vasquez as it is to prevent them from being held liable.

Gil Cedillo is suing the couple too, as well as the LA Fed; and Nury Martinez and Ron Herrera signed declarations in support of KDL’s lawsuit, yet aren’t pursuing legal action of their own. Herrera could be seen alongside Kevin de León during his failed campaign against Ysabel Jurado, during which he claimed that the Democratic Socialists of America—Los Angeles chapter (DSA-LA) was behind the leak. Cedillo has made a similar claim in La Opinion while also accusing Nika Soon-Shiong, the daughter of the owner of the Times, of involvement in the leak.

Yet there’s been no evidence that either Santos Leon or Karla Vasquez participated in the highly successful political movement in Los Angeles. It’s believed that both a teleconference system and Ron Herrera’s laptop were compromised to produce both the October 18, 2021, recording from a conference room and the second one made on September 30, 2022, as the leak was unfolding. That recording captured Herrera and Democratic consultant Hannah Cho in a phone conversation with Justin Wesson.

Interestingly, Santos Leon has a degree in computer science, but that would suggest that he would know how to conceal his digital tracks so as not to be discovered as the leaker. Some have suggested that the Reddit note is intended to mislead readers and not to be taken literally, yet it’s the sole piece of direct evidence along with the recordings themselves that’s reliable given the commonality of IP address spoofing.

Were the LA Fed’s computer system to be compromised through intrusion, a hacker would have little trouble executing the leak, and the LA Fed’s system was known to be potentially porous. In his ruling, Judge Pfhaler wrote, as referenced in the most recent appeal filing, that “The court additionally finds the underlying conduct leading to the creation of the recording and the ‘October surprise’ dissemination of the recording one year later individually and collectively also constitutes a series of illegal acts.”

This suggests that the leak was a highly calculated move rather than one of aberrance. About Honest-Finding-1581’s motive, breaking new ground, Bloch and Berman suggest the following operational theory of the alleged October surprise, a plan to influence the outcome of the election and ultimately realign Los Angeles political dynamics:

Indeed, the trial court failed to explain what preliminary conduct of Mr. Leon led to the creation of the recording, nor what evidence there is that shows that Mr. Leon was the mastermind of a strategy to cause De Leon to experience political challenges that somehow resulted in an unidentified “October surprise,” particularly as there is no evidence in the record of Leon even being a party participating in any election contest at that time, in October or November 2022.

In short, there’s no clear indicator that Santos Leon took any steps to plan or execute the leak. No corroborating communication, no witnesses against him, and no smoking gun evidence. An unnamed source claimed the opposite in July 2023 to Michele McPhee, stating about Santos Leon, "He downloaded a recording software on his work laptop, then tried to delete it. But. No bueno…Caught red handed and now he's gone.” The alleged software program is unrevealed.

Even if Santos Leon were to fail to block a jury trial in Appellate Court, he could still appeal to the California State Court. Perhaps most importantly, Kevin de León will have to show actual damages, as noted by attorneys Bloch and Berman: “Furthermore, the political damages that De León references, alleged damage to his integrity on the eve of an election, are not recoverable or calculable as damages in a civil case.”

Rick Caruso has denied any involvement in the leak, suggesting that the leak originated from supporters and was intended to harm his standing with Latino voters. A spokesperson for Mayor Karen Bass strenuously denied the public allegation made in July 2023. Outside of the LA Fed, only two other people spoke with participants prior to the October 2021 meeting that are on record, Councilmember Curren Price and LA Sentinel publisher Danny Bakewell, and both have denied any involvement in the “notorious” matter.

In the more famous October 2021 recording, Kevin de León says about his conversation with Sam Garrison that USC’s strategy under Caruso in regards to the Ridley-Thomas investigation was, “That what they’re doing has legs, just keep it going, just keep it going, just keep it going.” Bloch and Berman write in defense of Santos Leon on appeal, “The mere fact that members of the Los Angeles City Council were able to cause members of the Los Angeles Police Department to conduct an investigation of the recording, an investigation which resulted in no arrest or prosecution, does not equate to admissible evidence the Appellant performed the alleged dirty deeds.”

Then Chief Michel Moore, in announcing the criminal investigation in October 2022, claimed that it came at the request of the participants, a claim which the Los Angeles Times reported was denied by a spokesperson for Kevin de León. Moore also said that “he had been in contact with the attorney general [Rob Bonta] to ensure that the two probes didn’t needlessly overlap.” If this happened, it wasn’t by email, as LAPD declined to produce any “responsive records” pursuant to a California Public Records Act request.

The Attorney General’s Press Office has promised that the results of its investigation are believed to be in the negotiation phase with the Los Angeles City Council over a possible redrawing of district boundaries and that “when we have a resolution it will be announced publicly.” About the Times coverage of the decision by the DA’s Cyber Crime Division not to charge Leon and Vasquez, their attorneys write, “These articles are undoubtedly of public interest by providing warning, information, and education.”

Preemptorily, ahead of the AG’s investigation, Bloch and Berman further state conclusively that the October 18, 2021, meeting was an “attempt to illegally gerrymander the redrawing of the Los Angeles City Council Districts to their political favor.” Yet this is seemingly at odds with what’s known of the direction of the Attorney General investigation, with a leaked draft reportedly not finding “specific wrongdoing” but instead highlighting “other areas of concern.”

It’s unknown who leaked the document to the Times, which was not published despite inarguably being in the public interest. Bloch and Berman suggest the meeting was part of a “classic ‘hub-and-spoke’ conspiracy” defined as “engaging in a sequence of serial secret meetings regarding the redistricting process, rendering any claim of having an expectation of privacy to cloak their nefarious conduct to be spurious.”

Link: APPELLANT SANTOS LEON’S OPENING BRIEF

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

Link: Mark Ridley-Thomas Sentenced to 3½ Years in Prison for Corruptly Securing Benefits for Son from School via Bribery and Fraud Scheme

Link: Stephen P. Pfahler

Link: LA County Federation of Labor Scam

Link: LAPD widens investigation into source of racist City Hall leak

Link: L.A. prosecutors say recording of racist City Hall conversation was a crime but refer case to city attorney

Link: D.A. sends audio leak eavesdropping probe back to LAPD for additional investigation

Link: Attorney General Bonta: California Department of Justice to Investigate Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Process

Link: Tale of the Tape: L.A. City Council Scandal Rooted in Love, Not Politics

Link: Former Dean of USC’s Social Work School Agrees to Plead Guilty to Bribery for Funneling $100,000 Payment to Secure County Contract

Link: Prosecutors will not file criminal charges against 2 people at center of Los Angeles racism scandal