"Krekorian Wrong • String Along • Sing-a-Song" by Daniel Guss
@TheGussReport - On Friday, a three-person committee of the stunningly corrupt LA City Council met to decide whether city laws call for a suspension of Curren Price from its ranks while he fights his recent indictment on 10 counts of embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest.
And I don’t mean “stunningly corrupt” metaphorically.
As the meeting rolled on, I did a follow-up segment about it on “The John and Ken Show” on KFI AM-640, where I predicted that the Councilmembers will soon fight for the news spotlight.
In his grab for it, City Council president Paul Krekorian threw caution — and facts — to the wind.
Krekorian Wrong
Dozens of constituents, many apparently from Price’s district, showed up for their minute to speak. Later in the hours-long meeting, Councilmembers Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Hugo Soto-Martinez spoke as did Krekorian, who as Council president holds enormous sway over the Price decision, gushed over his and his wife’s fondness for Price and his, uh, wife.
The Price wife thing… that’s where it gets tricky, as this column has predicted for years prior to the indictment.
Krekorian never said whether he ever asked his pal about voting on city business that may have illegally enriched him and his wife, Delbra Richardson Price. Instead, Krekorian tried to prove that he understood the nuances between this indictment and those of their peers who wound up in, or are on their way to, prison for crimes while in office.
Krekorian mentioned some of those infamous names enshrined in City Council’s rogues’ gallery, like Jose Huizar, Mitch Englander, Mark Ridley-Thomas and, reaching back a little further, Richard Alarcon.
***
After droning on professorially, Krekorian babbled about “learning from experience” and “precedent,” except that he forgot what actually happened in the Alarcon case in THIS CLIP from Friday’s meeting.
“And in fact, (Richard Alarcon) was ultimately acquitted of all charges.”
To paraphrase Fonzie on “Happy Days,” that’s incorrectamundo.
On trial with his wife Flora Montes de Oca Alarcon in that case in 2014, Alarcon was — in fact — convicted of three voter-fraud charges and one perjury charge, and acquitted on 12 other counts.
In 2016, the convictions were all thrown out based on improper jury instructions.
In 2019, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office decided to drop the case because, "both defendants satisfactorily completed their sentences, we recognize that the law precludes any additional punishment following a retrial.”
That’s a far cry from an acquittal.
This is why the State Bar of California requires active attorneys to take Minimum Continuing Legal Education, MCLE, classes. It should be noted that Krekorian has twice been declared by the Bar as ineligible to practice law in California, once for failure to pay dues and another — wait for it — non-compliance with MCLE requirements.
I asked Krekorian, his chief of staff Karo Torossian and his media relations person Hugh Esten whether he will correct the record, and am still waiting for a response.
String Along
Last week, I explained how, just 70 minutes after the LA Times’ Dakota Smith published a 2017 story in which Price, his taxpayer-funded staffers and his campaign personnel dodged and denied allegations of the bigamy that eventually led to his indictment last week, the embattled lawmaker suddenly took the first action in his divorce case in nearly five years.
Let’s dig a little deeper on that.
Smith’s story, with the Price denials, was posted on the Times’ website at 7:05 PM March 21, 2017.
At the top of the second page of Price’s signed and dated Substitution of Attorney form, fax data shows that at 20:15 (8:15pm) on March 21, 2017, he hired Irvine, California, divorce attorney Sven Buncher.
So I ask again, why would Price and company declare to the LA Times that he wasn’t simultaneously married to two women (a key aspect of his indictment) but, just 70 minutes after the story was published, suddenly hire a divorce attorney to re-open the case after nearly five years of dormancy?
A search of the LA Times database this morning still shows no references to the name “Sven Buncher”…
…even though I repeatedly made his involvement in this matter public in a series of follow-ups:
So now, when exactly will the LA Times ask Price why he and his team, including taxpayer-funded city employees, lied to them?
If it doesn’t, it implies that the LA Times knowingly gave Price plausible deniability to win his re-election without holding him accountable to the truth. And let’s face it, the Times started doing Price indictment damage control just hours after the charges were publicized.
Sing-a-Song
In the first year of DanielGuss.Substack.com, 2022, this column received four journalism nominations from The Los Angeles Press Club.
I am proud to share that this weekend, my column, "Honest Services Fraud - How City Hall Rigged Its Herb Wesson Vote," took home the trophy for Best Activism Journalism - Print / Online. More on this story is coming soon.
Also, I am honored to be named the LA Press Club’s Online Journalist of the Year.
So thanks to all of you for reading and sharing these stories with your family, friends, neighbors and across social media. As Louis Brandeis said, “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”
I’ll stay on ‘em as best as I am able.
Follow me on The Twitters @TheGussReport and sign-up for my free Substack newsletter.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a multi-award-winning journalist. In June ‘23, he won the LA Press Club’s Online Journalist of the Year and Best Activism Journalism awards. He is City Editor for the Mayor Sam network, and has been a featured contributor for CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)