As Election Day grows ever closer, one candidate for Congress is facing the possibility of new revelations related to a years-old scandal.
Mike Feuer, one of the frontrunners to replace U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), was formerly the city attorney of Los Angeles. During his tenure, a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Water and Power over a billing issue was actually written by an attorney in Feuer’s office, who then “handed it to an opposing attorney, who filed it against the city,” as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
Feuer has maintained that he did nothing wrong, though “Paul Paradis, who ghost-wrote the lawsuit filed against the city and admitted taking a kickback, told a federal judge in November that an FBI agent testified in two affidavits that Feuer perjured himself before a federal grand jury,” the Times reports.
“Feuer also made false statements to the FBI, Paradis said,” the report added.
Four people, including three city employees, have pleaded guilty in cases related to the scandal, but Feuer was not one of them. In fact, as he pointed out to the Times, he was sent a letter by the U.S. attorney’s office that said he was not the subject of an investigation.
Despite that, the Times and Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocacy group, are asking a federal court to unseal more than 30 affidavits, search warrants and other documents to reveal “whether or not Mr. Feuer bears culpability for the scandal,” the Times and Consumer Watchdog wrote in their application for the documents.
“The public has a strong interest in assessing why prosecutors made the limited charging decisions they did, particularly where those decisions were made about highly influential and powerful public officials who were not charged, while lower ranking officials were charged,” the application says.
In a release, CW Litigation Director Jerry Flanagan said “the public has a right to know what top City officials did while performing their public duties.”
“The public is left to wonder whether Peters, the lowest ranking of several other unnamed City Attorney personnel, was really just the fall guy acting to benefit his bosses who have not been held to account,” Flanagan said.
Feuer, who has been endorsed by high-ranking officials like L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, did not tell the Times whether he supports unsealing the documents or prefers that they remain sealed, instead referring to the letter from federal prosecutors.
“That letter continues to speak for itself,” he said.