Two years ago, the investigation into the early-morning raid on Sheila Kuehl’s Santa Monica home by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies armed with guns and a battering ram is officially over and there will be no criminal charges.
Instead, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William Ryan approved a deal Wednesday in which the California Department of Justice said there was “a lack of evidence of wrongdoing.” The department has taken over a political investigation originally launched by then-Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s controversial public corruption unit.
“The Department of Justice conducted a thorough and independent investigation into the allegations that formed the basis of the LASD investigation,” state prosecutors wrote. “Based on this independent investigation, the Department of Justice concluded that there was insufficient evidence to support the filing of any criminal charges.”
The case centers on a contract worth more than $800,000 that Metro awarded to Peace Over Violence, a nonprofit run by Patti Giggans, Kuhl’s One of the friends is also a critic of Villanueva. The organization is tasked with running a hotline to report sexual harassment on the public transport system, but the agreement to do so has come under scrutiny after a whistleblower claimed Gigans was unfairly awarded the contract in exchange for supporting Kuhl. Los Angeles County Supervisor.
The investigation eventually expanded into other allegations, including baseless accusations — repeated by Villanueva often — that county Inspector General Max Huntsman was involved in before searching Kuhl’s home, Gigans’ home and the nonprofit’s offices A message was sent to Kurt.
days after the attack, the attorney said. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office was investigated by the Sheriff’s Department. For two years, the state quietly investigated the matter, which Villanueva seemed to denounce at every opportunity. He has labeled Kuhl and Huntsman “felon suspects” and has seized on the case as a way to undermine some of the most vocal critics of the department that oversees him. He did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment Wednesday.
Bonta reiterated the terms of the agreement in a press release, saying the agency “has concluded that there is insufficient evidence to support charges based on the MTA’s award of sole source contracts to POV or campaign contributions received” by Kuehl, the director of personnel associated with POV. Responsible. Additionally, the Justice Department found insufficient evidence to bring charges of interfering with the search warrant. As a result, the Department of Justice has closed its investigation into the matter.
Dedicated to Kool, he decided Retire in 2022Wednesday’s results proved that.
“I think it’s a pure victory,” she said. “Because there was never anything there, it was all made up by the Sheriff.”
this The case comes to a conclusion weeks later The Times revealed that state prosecutors had also recently rejected another high-profile investigation led by the same public corruption panel. In that case, investigators charged Huntsman and several others — including a former Times reporter — with various felonies allegedly involving theft of records and leaking documents. Federal and state authorities repeatedly dismissed the case, and at one point a legal counsel for the county warned department officials that the case was “legally unviable.”
That investigation, along with the Kuhl investigation, was one of Villanueva’s main criticisms of county supervisors. At one point he cited this as part of his rationale for excluding Huntsman from the department’s database. He asked county officials to fire Huntsman at least twice. But now, after years of legal wrangling, Huntsman is no longer the focus of an investigation launched by the agency he oversees.
The Sheriff’s Department had no immediate comment.
Although the raid took place in the fall of 2022, the corruption that allegedly led to it began years earlier.
In 2013 and 2014, Metro sought help from Peace Over Violence amid continued complaints of sexual harassment and lewd behavior on local buses and subways. A Metro spokesman at the time later said he found the group through an Internet search. He called Gigans, and she began working informally with Metro, helping officials develop an advertising strategy and an anti-harassment slogan: “This is prohibited.”
Gigans said her organization ultimately needs to be paid if Metro officials want her to provide more help. As a result, Peace Over Violence received $105,000 for consulting work in 2015 and 2016, as The Times previously reported.
Although Kuehl was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2014 and serves on Metro’s board of directors, Metro officials said she had nothing to do with the original anti-harassment efforts.
The scope of the effort expanded after three Metro board members, including Kuhl, asked staff to hire an outside group to provide victim support as a way to address the ongoing issues without requiring more Rely on the police.
Subsequently, the organization “Peace Conquers Violence” proposed setting up a 24-hour hotline with an annual fee of US$160,000. The hotline opened in early 2017, and Metro staff extended the contract for another three years and an additional $495,000 — a decision that did not require board approval, meaning Kuehl had no say.
The hotline was managed by then-Metro employee Jennifer Loew. But in 2019, As The Times previously reportedAfter that, Loew started to have trouble at work. An internal investigation found she had “intimidated” staff and she was eventually given a warning.
Weeks later, court records show, Love began accusing Metro of corruption, focusing her accusations on the Peace Over Violence contract, which she said was a donation from Geoghegan to Kuhl’s campaign in 2013 and 2014. of $2,000 in return.
First, Love asked Metro’s inspector general to investigate. She also asked the FBI, Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office to take up the case. There was no indication they were interested, but in September 2019, the Sheriff’s Department sent detectives to investigate Love’s report.
The detectives are from the Public Anti-Corruption Unit Which critics say Villanueva has targeted his political opponents. It was in the same unit that the activities of the Civilian Oversight Committee, of which Gigans had long been a member and later censured In a 10-page memo Calls for an investigation into whether Villanueva abused his power.
The department served the first search warrant in February 2021 as part of the Peace Over Violence investigation. Peace Over Violence handed over boxes of records. Metro and its inspector general questioned the legality of the investigation and went to court to challenge the search warrant.
That fall, the Sheriff’s Department presented the evidence to the district attorney and asked them to consider filing charges. Prosecutors refused, saying the evidence did not prove “beyond reasonable doubt” Anyone has sinned. The Sheriff’s Department continues to investigate. Although Villanueva frequently talks and posts online about the investigation, he said he recused himself from the case and others handled by his public corruption unit.
In the fall of 2022, Superior Court Judge Eleanor Hunter told the Sheriff’s Department that if investigators wanted to conduct more searches, they would need to narrow the scope of the search warrants. But the following week, while Hunter was on vacation, Max Fernandez, the lead investigator on the case, asked another judge for a new batch of search warrants and received approval for the raids, saying they might reveal bribes and Evidence of other crimes.
Fernandez’s statement filed with the court to justify the warrant also claimed that the Peace Over Violence hotline was a “complete failure” and that despite this, the contract was extended without competitive bidding or analysis. Outside court Wednesday, Fernandez declined to comment on the case or its outcome.
Just after 7 a.m. on Sept. 14, 2022, officers began banging on the door of Kuhl’s Santa Monica home. Once inside, they escorted Kuhl outside barefoot and took her phone. Investigators also searched Gigans’ home, the offices of Peace Over Violence and several other buildings downtown.
In an interview outside her home during the search, Kuhl called the charges against her “completely fabricated” and said she knew “nothing about the contract.” Then, she said the county’s attorney alerted her to the impending search the night before.
Villanueva then sent a letter to Bonta asking him to launch a criminal investigation into the warning that Kuhl received, which Villanueva blamed on Huntsman. hunter Deny the accusation and said phone records would clear him.
As they had the first time, the searches set off a months-long legal battle over the warrants — a battle that continued even after Bonta’s office took over the case. In the deal approved this week, the state agreed to revoke the search warrant and return seized items.
Although the case has been concluded and the Public Corruption Unit has now been disbanded, the political tensions that led to the case could still be fodder for a future investigation – this time into the unit and its activities. Sean Kennedy, a member of the Civilian Oversight Board who represents Gigans during the investigation, said the watchdog group has been trying in recent weeks to subpoena Fernandez, who still works for the Sheriff’s Department, to testify.
“I’m concerned that there are criminal gang connections,” Kennedy told The Times. “Multiple sources told me that the public corruption details were hand-picked by former Sheriff Villanueva and former Deputy Sheriff Tim Murakami. We’ve learned that Murakami is a tattooed caveman and has been hiding his tattoos for years, and we’re deeply concerned about whether public corruption details are or were ever used to thwart oversight officials investigating the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s deputy gang.
