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A former Los Angeles City Council member has copped a plea to charges of corruption on Thursday after claiming for years that he was innocent.
Jose Huizar, a Democrat, took the plea deal following a raid by the FBI in 2020 over allegations he was accepting payments from developers, “further exposing a culture of corruption at City Hall,” Breitbart News reported.
At the time of the raid, the outlet noted:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested L.A. City Councilman Jose Huizar (D) on Tuesday morning for corruption, alleging that he had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and treated his office like a “criminal enterprise.”
Huizar represent[ed] downtown Los Angeles. The DOJ alleges that he solicited bribes from developers, particularly Chinese developers, who sought his help in speeding their way through the planning procedures of the city.
In 2014, Breitbart News reported that the city settled a sexual harassment lawsuit in which Huizar was alleged to have carried on a romantic affair with his deputy chief of staff.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Huizar admitted taking at least $1.5 million in bribes from real estate developers in order to help them get their projects approved.
“In a plea agreement filed Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles, Huizar acknowledged that sweeping corruption allegations that he has denied for years were actually true, saying he was ‘pleading guilty because I am guilty of the charges,'” the paper said.
“Huizar’s unexpected capitulation caps a brutal downfall for a man who was born into poverty on a Mexican ranch, grew up in Boyle Heights, and went on to earn a master’s at Princeton and a law degree at UCLA before serving 15 years on the L.A. City Council,” the report noted further.
In July, meanwhile, a former Democratic Massachusetts mayor convicted of corruption charges reported to prison after a court rejected his request for a delay.
Former Fall River Mayor Jasiel Correia reported to a federal medium security prison to begin his six-year prison sentence for crimes that a judge called “reprehensible.”
Correia was convicted of defrauding investors in a smartphone app company and extorting money from local marijuana businesses.
U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock in Boston ordered him to be incarcerated for engaging in “reprehensible corruption of a type that is incomprehensibly crude.”
“What I have before me is an absolute lack of remorse,’’ said Woodlock before calling Correia’s corruption scheme “a corrosive crime, it undercuts, it eviscerates a community.”
“If we can’t trust each other, if we can’t trust our government, where are we? This is at the core of who we are,” he continued.
“There is no showing of actual innocence,” Woodlock said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Zach Hafer argued before the sentencing that Correia’s “old-school corruption” warranted an 11-year prison term, saying he continued breaking the law even when he knew was under investigation.
“That is the height of chutzpah,” Hafer said.
“The betrayal of people who considered him like family, the pervasive lying, cheating, stealing, and blame-shifting, and the egregious breaches of the public trust must be met with a sentence that thoroughly repudiates the defendant’s abhorrent conduct and deters both this defendant and others like him from doing it again,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum to the court.
The Boston Herald added:
Prosecutors said that before being elected mayor, Correia, a young Providence College graduate, lured investors into sinking $363,690 into SnoOwl, a company developing an app to connect local businesses with consumers.
Prosecutors said Correia stole more than $231,000 to fund his campaign and a lavish lifestyle that included a luxury Mercedes-Benz vehicle, jewelry, casino trips, and strip clubs.
Prosecutors also said that after Correia was elected mayor, he extorted hundreds of thousands of dollars from marijuana companies seeking licenses to open in Fall River.
A jury found Correia guilty on 21 charges including wire fraud, filing false tax returns, and extortion. The judge this week threw out eight of Correia’s wire and tax fraud convictions, finding that prosecutors failed to prove them.
