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More trouble is hitting the family of House Speaker and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi in the form of a sixth FBI probe into her son.
The investigation involves a San Francisco official who was allegedly bribed to remove violations from the flop house, known as “The Pit” owned by the girlfriend of Paul Pelosi Jr., The Daily Mail reported.
Earlier this month a DailyMail.com investigation revealed Pelosi Jr., 53, has been linked to five previous federal probes. This ongoing criminal case is the sixth.
San Francisco permit expediter Rodrigo Santos, a former president of the San Francisco Building Inspection Commission, was indicted for fraud in November.
Prosecutors claim he arranged for his clients to donate thousands of dollars to building inspector Bernie Curran’s favorite non-profit – a rugby club – in exchange for city permits.
Curran and Santos deny wrongdoing. They are next due in court on February 4.
One of Santos’s clients, named only as ‘Client 9’ in the FBI documents, wrote the Golden Gate Youth Rugby Association a check for $1,500 to encourage Curran to remove violation notices against a squalid Mission District ‘hotel’ – known among building inspectors as ‘The Pit’ – which had a long history of dangerous permit violations, according to text messages obtained by the feds.
Apparently, Pelosi Jr. was attempting to get permits and fix code violations for the hotel, but not “fix” them by actually doing the work.
If Pelosi Jr. is the mysterious “Client 9” it places him at the center of a major federal investigation.
Pelosi Jr. associates, including his ex-girlfriend, have been subpoenaed by FBI agents and every one of them said the FBI agents asked questions about Pelosi Jr.
“Nancy’s son himself admitted he was ‘helping remove the citations from the property’ in an interview with a local government agency worker who wrote up the statements in a February 2019 report obtained by DailyMail.com.
“Pelosi Jr.’s involvement matches the description of Client 9 in prosecutor’s files as ‘an individual working on behalf of the owners of the property,’ The Daily Mail said.
The criminal complaint by the feds shows the candid text exchange between “Client 9: and the person who was to fix the permits.
“I will forward the address to Curran. He will abate it,” Santos said in the text.
“Please drop off a check payable to Golden Gate Youth [Rugby] Association for $1k. Bernie’s nonprofit,” the 63-year-old said.
“With pleasure,” Client 9 said before later sending a photo of a $1,500 check and a message that said, “made the donation and it is being sent today.”
It is unknown why the check was for $1,500 and not the requested $1,000, but the organization never cashed it and is not accused of any wrongdoing.
The building inspector, who has been fired, is furious and has said he did not know about the scheme and acted professionally for his entire career.
“What he was looking for was how to get rid of Notices of Violation – or get them taken care of,” an anonymous building inspector, who allegedly provided a text message exchange with Pelosi Jr., said.
“He was never overt with me on how to take care of this,” the anonymous inspector said.
“I was like, hey, if he wants to take me there, I could say, ‘fix this, do this’ — that’s what I do. But he would never go to the property.
“The things I was telling him were pretty straightforward. But he would never go there,” he said.
Nicole Bulick, another ex-girlfriend of Pelosi Jr., said to The Daily Mail. She said that the FBI’s interest in Pelosi Jr.’s involvement in that property started around 2017.
“Paul’s been under FBI investigation like three times over this,” the ex-girlfriend said. “Maybe in the summer of 2017.”
“The FBI looked at this for almost two years. They called me too… He went and spoke with the FBI three times,” she said.
