Case Against Weiss

Independent thoughts on the most important election in the history of Los Angeles

1. THE MOST PRO-DEVELOPER COUNCIL MEMBER

Weiss’s 2-term tenure as councilmember for Council District 5 has been marked by controversy and scandal. Nearly recalled by his own constituents for favoring every disruptive development over the objections of his own constituents, Weiss continues to receive hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars in campaign donations from wealthy developers and contractors and all their acolytes.

How can Weiss even pretend to be impartial and not behooved to those he turns to for campaign finances?

Let’s be clear, when Los Angeles’ wealthiest developer, Rick Caruso, announces that he’s holding a $1,000 a plate fundraiser for Jack Weiss, it’s not because Mr. Caruso or any of the other attendees want Weiss to be fair and impartial. They want Weiss to be “their boy” in City Hall. And Jack’s made it very clear; his partiality is for sale - just pony up the contributions.

2. QUESTIONABLE ETHICS

The City Attorney is supposed to be the chief law enforcement officer for the City. It’s a job of considerable power and you don’t want an unethical person making life-changing decisions about whether or not to prosecute an individual or a corporation.

Weiss has defined his ethics by the way he ignored the City Charter when required to pay the illegal campaign contributions he received from to the City Treasurer. Weiss regards himself as “above the law,” an attitude typical wealthy privileged elitists who think the law is simply an inconvenience.

Jack’s lack of ethics is as much a serious concern for Los Angelenos as is his lack of truthfulness; recently the Los Angeles Times reported on the first public debate between Jack Weiss and Carmen Trutanich. Weiss reproduced the article on his website, but re-wrote the headline to say “Weiss Wins First Debate.” It doesn’t get sleazier, dirtier or more dishonest than that. It speaks volumes about Weiss’s moral core and is a salient warning of the dangers of allowing a person with such a blatant disregard for the truth to have any place in the leadership of the City Attorney’s Office.

3. BILLBOARD BLIGHT - JACK’S GIFT TO THE BILLBOARD OPERATORS

If anyone is responsible for the unbelievable explosion in billboards, it’s Jack Weiss. As further explained on this website, Jack Weiss and Rocky Delgadillo were the only two attorneys representing the City of Los Angeles when they settled a law suit with billboard operators.

The settlement was nothing short of a gift to the billboard operators; they were not only allowed to legitimize all the illegal billboards they had erected, but they also were allowed to replace 900 billboards with digital billboards that rake in millions of dollars for their owners.

How much did the City of Los Angeles receive as a result of this “settlement?” Nothing!

How much did Jack Weiss receive as a result of his gift to the billboard operators? That’s the question that Jack Weiss will not answer directly. He says “Go to the City Ethics Commission website and look up my campaign donations,” but he knows that those records fail to disclose the relationship between the donors and the billboard operators.

The fact is that it is not just the billboard operators who profited from Jack’s Gift. Land owners, property management companies, advertising agencies and contractors who erect and maintain the billboards are living large off Jack’s gift, and the City is being cheated out of desperately needed revenue because Jack Weiss sold us out. The problem is that when you do check to see who is funding Jack Weiss’s campaign, there’s no way of telling if an individual is also a recipient of Jack’s Gift. But Weiss knows. Like any other person running for office, he knows who is making donations and why. But he won’t tell us.

Weiss is now trying to convince anyone who’ll listen that he’s going to be to tough on illegal billboards. It is so transparently laughable that Weiss should turn his back on those who supported him that it defies belief.

Perhaps the truth is that Weiss will turn the power and force of the City Attorney's Office against those who do not support him. Now that’s about the only thing I’m prepared to believe about Jack Weiss.

4. DISDAIN FOR THE ‘ORDINARY’ ELECTORATE

Throughout the primary election campaign Jack Weiss failed to show up at candidates forums hosted by a wide variety of organizations who sought to inform voters about the qualifications of the 5 candidates.

Jack Weiss hid from the general public at nearly all the public meetings and forums, obviously scared of being challenged by his record of sleazy ethics, cozy relationships with special interests like developers and contractors, and woefully inadequate decisions like the sellout settlement that Weiss and Delgadillo brokered with the billboard operators.

When voters asked the candidates who could be bothered to show up questions about their vision for the future of Los Angeles, voters got answers from the four candidates but nothing from Jack Weiss.

That was why I started holding up a photo of Jack Weiss, to let them know what the guy who was too afraid to show his face looked like.

The irony of Weiss’s cowardly tactic was not lost on audiences all across the City, from north to south, east to west. All the while that real candidates were making themselves available to voters, Jack Weiss was hiding behind his $1.7M campaign of glossy mailers and slick tv advertisements portraying Jack Weiss as a serious crime fighter who tackles gangs and protects rape victims.

Yet Weiss, the self proclaimed consummate crime fighter, the “experienced prosecutor” was too scared to meet the public and defend his record.

Indeed, the only time Weiss showed up was a dog and pony show of a candidates forum where he forced the organizers to not only;

1) Exclude two candidates who he feared would speak candidly against him, and

2)Insisted that other candidates were excluded from the room when he spoke.

Jack Weiss’s cynical manipulation of, and disdain for the electorate extends beyond failing to address his constituents. When forced to attend a neighborhood council meeting, Weiss spent more time playing with his Blackberry than listening to the concerns of his constituents. When Jack was challenged over his support for, guess what? yes, an unpopular development, Jack Weiss simply walked out.

Weiss routinely dismisses those who criticize his questionable support for Big Development as “a handful of disgruntled people.” So, if you live in Weiss’s council district and you have legitimate concerns about the quality of life in your neighborhood, and you ask your elected official to represent you and not the developer who wants to build multi-occupancy or commercial developments in quiet residential areas, you are dismissed as “a handful of disgruntled people.” Don’t expect Jack to represent your interests or concerns, he’s too busy taking care of his supporters interests.

Weiss is a born into privilege elitist who views ‘public service’ as a minor inconvenience to his political ambitions.

5. HIDES BEHIND SPOKESHOLES

Whenever questions arise over controversial matters like Jack Weiss’s illegal campaign contributions, or the bogus LA Times headline that Weiss placed on his website proclaiming himself the ‘winner’ of the first debate, Jack loses his tongue and relies on his spokesholes to try to clean up the ugly mess.

Jack Weiss avoids hard answering questions by hiding behind the skirts of his highly paid spokesholes. That way Weiss can distance himself from any response that later transpires to be false. It’s called ‘plausible deniability,’ a trick of modern politics that once again underscores the rank hatred Jack Weiss has for inconvenient truths like his awful attendance record at City Hall, his ‘lack of knowledge’ over illegal campaign contributions, and his ineptitude at negotiating settlements.

Ace Smith and Dave Jacobson are currently in the driving seat of the train wreck that is Jack Weiss’s campaign. One cannot help feeling a high degree of sympathy for both them; stuck with candidate that has almost as many negatives as he has special interest campaign contributions, it must be a hard job trying to make a silk purse out of such a vast sow’s ear.

But that’s the whole point of the Weiss campaign; to keep Jack away from the general public - to spoon feed the uninformed an image of Jack Weiss that bears such little resemblance to reality as to be almost comedic.

The reality is, of course, that the City Attorney can no more hide behind a spokeshole than a trial attorney. The spin and lies spouted by spokesholes don’t wash in the crucible of truth that is the courtroom. Unless, that is, that Weiss plans to run the City Attorney’s Office in the same shameful manner has Dellgadillo. Delgadillo is rarely directly quoted on anything, again utilizing the political expediency of spokesholes to provide plausible deniability should the wind change direction.

Just as Weiss displayed cowardice in not allowing himself to be confronted by the public during debates and forums, he is equally cowardly in hiding behind spokesholes.

When you stop and think about it you have to wonder how the ‘experienced prosecutor’ plans defend the City from gang violence and predatory lawsuits if all he’s too scared to debate his opponents?

Weiss is the poster boy for phony career politicians, and while we seem satisfied to allow certain of that ilk to represent us as councilmembers, we cannot afford to have such a lowly pathetic under-achiever as City Attorney. We’ve already had 8 years of that!

6. PUPPET OF THE MAYOR

The LA Times summed it up best when their Editorial Board declined to endorse Weiss and selected Carmen Trutanich. The LA Times recognized the danger of having the Mayor’s lap dog as City Attorney; it’s as unhealthy relationship as one could possibly imagine.

During the Bush administration Democrats condemned the relationship between President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, accusing Gonzales of rubber stamping anything that the President wanted.

It really defies belief that one can possibly define the potential relationship between Mayor Villaraigosa and Jack Weiss any differently. Weiss has on several occasions opened his mouth hastily in support of anything the Mayor wants, only later to have to change positions to fall into step.

Two recent examples of Weiss’s ‘follow my leader’ philosophy are;

1)Pico/Olympic One-Way - Weiss jumped onto the Mayor’s bandwagon in support of this ill conceived plan without realizing that it was illegal without an Environmental Impact Report. The Weiss, who claims to have the legal qualifications and experience, could make such a rank amateur mistake speaks volumes about the sort of lap dog leadership Weiss brings to the table.
2)The Dog Food Eating Firefighter Case - again Weiss unthinkingly supported the Mayor’s plan to make a gift of $3M to settle this case. When the Mayor felt the temperature of public opinion rising, the Mayor backed off and, of course, so did his lap dog Weiss.

Weiss lacks the independent thought and intellect that has been woefully missing from the City Attorney’s Office. It was doubtless for that reason that the Mayor selected Weiss to be his lap dog City Attorney, and with shameless disregard for the City Charter, the Mayor made himself Weiss’s campaign manager.

The City Charter calls for an independent elected City Attorney, not someone appointed by the Mayor. Jack Weiss has neither the mental aptitude for making decisions that the City can rely upon, nor the independence demanded by the City Charter.

7. LIGHTWEIGHT LEGAL EXPERIENCE

The “experienced prosecutor” has claimed to have tried “About 8” cases, a shockingly low number of trials by any standard. In my first year as a deputy district attorney, I tried 10 and many I know tried far more.

Worse still is that when I tried to verify Weiss’s claim I could only find evidence of 2. Recently, at the first public debate (yes, the one that Weiss falsely claimed to have won) Carmen Trutanich stated that Weiss had tried only 2 cases, and Weiss did not dispute that.

Weiss calls himself the”experienced prosecutor” and uses a courtroom sketch of himself on his website to make the point that he is the consummate prosecutor. I don’t know whether the sketch was simply created as the Weiss campaign was faced with a lack of real evidence of Jack’s reputedly lackluster career (likely), or is indeed an actual sketch made of Jack Weiss prosecuting the hard case, the seminal case, the one that shows Jack is a capable and experienced prosecutor.

The problem for Jack Weiss is the case he highlights on his website is one called the ‘Openheimer Case’ - that was one of the two cases I was able to find. When I researched that case, it was staggered to find that Jack’s seminal case involved the prosecution of Darlene Gillespie; a former Mousekeeter accused of fraud. She served 3 months in jail. This is the ‘experienced prosecutor?’

If Jack lacks the experience in the criminal arena, his civil experience is marked by being wrong on almost every issue he’s weighed in on. He and Rocky Delgadillo were the only lawyers present when they ‘settled’ a case brought against the City by billboard operators. The ‘settlement’ was nothing short of a gift to the billboard operators; it legitimized thousands of illegal billboards and granted the billboard operators the right to transform 900 illegal billboards into highly lucrative digital billboards. Frankly, the ‘settlement’ may be more than simply an example of mere ineptitude by Weiss, it smacks of underhand dealing.

Weiss wrongly advised the Mayor that the Pico/Olympic One-Way traffic plan was a viable solution and immediately jumped on the Mayor’s bandwagon to claim the glory for solving West Los Angeles’s traffic congestion problem - a problem Weiss was singularly responsible for as he had previously supported every high-density development that was now causing the traffic congestion. Once again, Jack Weiss’s legal ineptitude was apparent when the Mayor’s plan was deemed illegal because it had been approved without conducting a legally required Environmental Impact Report (“EIR”). Weiss didn’t know an EIR was required.

Jack Weiss’s record as an attorney is bereft of the experience necessary to lead the City Attorney’s Office. We’ve already had 8 years of Rocky Delgadillo, another legal lightweight and there really is no significant difference between Weiss and Delgadillo in terms of their legal experience and ability; they are both phony career politicians with dubious ethics and murky records replete with self aggrandizing claims that cannot be substantiated.

8. RECALL EFFORT BY OWN CONSTITUENTS

Weiss was such a poor representative for his constituents that he almost faced recall. But for the lack of 1,000 petition signatures, Weiss would have faced a recall election brought by Council District 5 residents who were sick of Weiss’s slimy ethics and favoritism towards Big Development.

If Weiss has the capacity to ignore the needs of his Council District, imagine how terrible he would be as a City Attorney? Ordinary residents’ concerns over public safety would be swept aside; dismissed as simply the “sour grapes of a small group of malcontents” (a typical Weiss response to criticism) while Weiss and the Mayor ignore the ever rising tide of gang violence that grips certain parts of the City unchecked. Unchecked because it’s politically inexpedient to tackle gang crime head on, it upsets the communities that the Mayor relies upon for support.

9. BRATTON’S “NO-BRAINER” ENDORSEMENT

The Los Angeles Police Department’s Chief, Bill Bratton, has controversially endorsed Jack Weiss, appearing in hundreds of tv adverts during which Weiss says nothing (he cannot open his mouth without putting his foot in it) and the Chief tells us what a great guy Jack Weiss is.

It’s shameful and disgraceful that an appointed City employee should be coerced into entering the dirty world of politics, and that alone should warn you of what lies in store of Weiss becomes City Attorney.

The nation's second largest city has a Charter that demands independence from its City Attorney, not appointment. The dangers of allowing the Mayor to control the selection of City Attorney are never more apparent than by this blatant manipulation of our Chief of Police to endorse a politician.

Bratton’s ‘No-Brainer’ endorsement of Jack Weiss flies in the face of the endorsement of Carmen Trutanich by Sheriff Lee Baca and every other police agency in and around Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing LAPD’s 10,000 cops, did not follow their Chief in endorsing Weiss, they endorsed Carmen Trutanich. What does that tell you?

I have a lot or respect for Chief Bratton, and the fact that he declined to endorse Weiss for the longest time suggests to me that the Chief’s endorsement was not entirely an expression of the Chief’s free will.

Reading between the lines, you have a Chief of Police who, from the ‘get go,’ has been campaigning for more cops on the streets. Then you have a Mayor who last year promised us 1,000 more (yet to be delivered) cops based on increasing our trash tax collection fees.

Do you think it’s possible that the Mayor told the Chief that if the Chief didn’t endorse the Mayor’s lap dog, we won’t get those 1,000 cops? I think that’s a highly likely scenario, and I think that’s what Chief Bratton meant when he said “It’s a no-brainer.” After all, the Chief could hardly endorse Carmen Trutanich and expect to keep his job, could he?

The Chief’s endorsement of Weiss is yet another example of why we need a strong independent City Attorney, and a prime example of why Jack Weiss should not be allowed to be our City Attorney - it’s not like the Mayor would have to twist Jack’s arm to get what he wants, Jack’s already shown us that he’s nothing more than the Mayor’s ‘Yes’ man.

10 EXPLOITATION OF RAPE VICTIMS

Jack Weiss ran a nauseating tv advert in the 2009 Primary, where Jeri Elster, a rape survivor, proclaims Weiss to be the “Only One Who Would Listen...” regarding the backlog of DNA Rape Kits that had not yet been processed.

The ad had a familiar ring to it - Jack used the same ploy in his 2005 campaign for City Council.

So what did Jack do to position himself as the “Only One Who Would Listen?”

The answer is that Jack Weiss did nothing except allow the situation to get worse so that he could ultimately exploit it for his political career using a cheap trick.

Weiss, as Chairman of the Public Safety Committee was fully aware that the was a developing crisis; DNA samples taken from rape victims were not being processed quickly enough to identify the rapist.

Part of the reason for the backlog was that the LAPD Crime Lab was in the process of being rebuilt to counter allegations ‘contamination.’ As the LAPD Crime Lab’s ability to process DNA samples was so limited during this time, the alternative was to pay other crime labs to do the work - an expensive process with the average cost being $1,000 for analysis.

Throughout Jack Weiss’s tenure as Chair of the Public Safety Committee all he did was call a representative from the LAPD Crime Lab to report on the ever-growing number of un-processed DNA samples, colloquially called “Rape Kits.” That’s all that happened. Whenever the Committee met, they were informed of the increased number.

By the early part of 2008, the number of un-processed Rape Kits had grown to 7,000, that’s a $7M problem, based on the $1,000 per kit cost of processing. Some Rape Kits were now so old that:

1)The DNA samples themselves might be too old and thus degraded to analyze, and
2)Some of the cases might be too old to prosecute because of the Statute of Limitations.

Still Jack Weiss did nothing except haul in a LAPD Crime Lab representative to report the number of un-processed Rape Kits. At the same time, a charity was formed to try to raise money to solve the problem - a huge task;

Now fast-forward to September 2008. Weiss is about to launch his campaign for City Attorney and he needs to show himself as the champion of rape victims, just as he did in 2005.

What does Jack do? He cynically, and perhaps illegally, uses money from Council District 5’s portion of the City’s ‘Street Furniture Revenue Fund’ to make a $250k contribution towards the $7,000,000 problem.

What is the City’s ‘Street Furniture Revenue Fund’? Well we’ve all seen the advertising on bus shelters and because of a deal the City negotiated, the City gets a share of the advertising revenue from advertisements placed on City-owned ‘furniture’ on our streets.

Each of the 15 Council Districts is entitled use to their 1/15 share of those funds for the benefit of the Council District - to pay for some particular need of the District. One example of that use was when $20K was used for installing Security Cameras in Sherman Oaks to deter graffiti. Using Council District 5’s portion of the Street Furniture Revenue Fund to process Rape Kits could be viewed by some as being an illegal use of the funds when perhaps some more anti-graffiti cameras, or controlled school-crossings are a more proper use of the funds, but who can question “doing the right thing?”

So obviously Jack Weiss, the champion of the Rape Victims, called on all 14 other Councilmembers to do the same thing with their shares of the Street Furniture Revenue Fund?

If Jack Weiss really wanted to make an impact on this backlog, he should have asked all the other 14 Council Districts to join him and spend their $250k shares. Then there would be $3,750,000 TO PROCESS MORE THAN HALF of the backlogged DNA Rape Kits.

BUT JACK WEISS DID NOT ASK ANY OTHER COUNCIL MEMBER to contribute funds to really tackle the problem.

The LA Times reported on this matter and could find NO OTHER COUNCIL MEMBER who would state that they had been approached by Weiss, or that the idea of doing this had been mentioned to them before Weiss did what we all know he did - he deliberately and cynically kept this $250k use of CD5’s money to himself; SO HE COULD BE THE ONLY ONE.

And what about Jeri Elster’s claim that “Jack was the only one who would listen?” Which of the other 14 Councilmembers did Elster contact?

Which of the 14 Councilmembers were so callous that they would ignore her?

According to the LA Times,

NO OTHER COUNCILMEMBER WAS APPROACHED BY ELSTER.

Jeri Elster was used by Weiss in his 2005 campaign, where she used exactly more or less the same line “He was the only one who would listen.”

There is something frankly disgusting, disingenuous and deceptive about the way Jack Weiss has manipulated the plight of rape victims to position himself as some kind of hero.

In a manner truly typical of Weiss’s lack of ethics and honor, he’s telling half truths and playing word games;

WEISS WAS THE “ONLY ONE” BECAUSE HE MADE SURE NOBODY ELSE COULD PARTICIPATE.

In doing so, Weiss made the problem worse, not better.

I SAY “NO” ON WEISS !

I’ve been a tough prosecutor for 12 years. For this reason, and because I believe that corruption, deception and bait and switch politics are rampant in City Hall, I’ve put together the case against Jack Weiss; the poster boy for all that is wrong with City Hall.

“Pay to Play” politics is not a joke, it’s a crime and the developers and contractors who made illegal money-laundered campaign contributions to Jack Weiss were prosecuted and convicted.

Jack Weiss, however, did not return those illegal contributions as required by the Los Angeles City Charter. Worse, he also did not repay the taxpayers for the matching funds he received based on those illegal contributions.

The Office of City Attorney demands leadership of the highest ethical standards. Jack Weiss, by choosing to keep illegal laundered money from developers and contractors, and refusing to refund taxpayers for the matching funds he received based on “dirty money,” has shown an alarming lack of ethics and his true character.

It’s not surprising. Weiss is a career politician with a background of privilege and elitism. Simply put, he is entirely unconnected with the people he is supposed to represent - you and me, and far too beholden to “special interests” like the developers, contractors, billboard operators and all their associated flunkies who contribute either legally or illegally to his campaign.

What Jack Weiss does not want you to see. KNBC’s investigative report on Weiss and the developers’ illegal campaign contributions; “Laundered Elections”

Weiss’s overly close relationship with
Mayor Villariagosa - cause for concern.

Weiss and Delgadillo both received illegal campaign contributions from the same source. Both have failed to repay the City Treasurer as required by the City Charter.

Weiss is high on the list of receiving illegal campaign donations

Weiss was fortunate not to be prosecuted, his contributors were less fortunate.

Political strategist Ace Smith currently

speaks for Weiss. Smith ran Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Weiss stayed at home rather than meet his own constituents.

The public saw more of Weiss’s photo than they saw of the ‘experienced prosecutor’ himself - he was too scared to meet the public and answer questions.

It’s a no-brainer

If you haven’t already seen it, please take a look at NBC’s emmy-award winning investigative report “Laundered Elections” were Weiss’s ethical issues were first exposed.

Jack “Two-Trials” Weiss

The Experienced Prosecutor?