A planned increase in federal immigration enforcement in the Bay Area is now on pause throughout the region and in major East Bay cities, not just in San Francisco, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said Friday.
Lee said in a statement that Alameda County Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez had “confirmed through her communications” with federal immigration officials that the planned operations were “cancelled for the greater Bay Area — which includes Oakland — at this time.”
The announcement followed lingering concerns about ramped up immigration enforcement among East Bay leaders after President Trump and San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced Thursday that a planned “surge” had been called off in San Francisco.
Trump and Lurie had very specifically addressed San Francisco, even as additional Border Patrol agents were being staged across the bay on Coast Guard Island, which is in the waters between Alameda and Oakland.
At a press conference following Trump’s annoucement about San Francisco, Lee had said the situation remained “fluid,” that she had received no such assurances about the East Bay and that Oakland was continuing to prepare for enhanced immigration enforcement in the region.
Alameda County Dist. Atty. Ursula Jones Dickson had previously warned that the announced stand down in San Francisco could be a sign the administration was looking to focus on Oakland instead — and make an example of it.
“We know that they’re baiting Oakland, and that’s why San Francisco, all of a sudden, is off the table,” Jones Dickson said Thursday morning. “So I’m not going to be quiet about what we know is coming. We know that their expectation is that Oakland is going to do something to cause them to make us the example.”
The White House on Friday directed questions about the scope of the pause in operations and whether it applied to the East Bay to the Department of Homeland Security, which referred The Times back to Trump’s statement about San Francisco on Friday — despite its making no mention of the East Bay or Oakland.
In that statement, posted to his Truth Social platform, Trump had written that a “surge” had been planned for San Francisco starting Saturday, but that he had called it off after speaking to Lurie.
Trump said Lurie had asked “very nicely” that Trump “give him a chance to see if he can turn it around” in the city, and that business leaders — including Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Marc Benioff of Salesforce — had expressed confidence in Lurie.
Trump said he told Lurie that it would be “easier” to make San Francisco safer if federal forces were sent in, but told him, “let’s see how you do.”
Lurie in recent days has touted falling crime rates and numbers of homeless encampments in the city, and said in his own announcement of the stand down that he had told Trump that San Francisco was “on the rise” and that “having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery.”
In California and elsewhere, the Trump administration has aggressively sought to expand the reach and authority of the Border Patrol and federal immigration agents. Last month, the DOJ fired its top prosecutor in Sacramento after she told Gregory Bovino, chief of the Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector, that he could not carry out indiscriminate immigration raids around Sacramento this summer.
In Oakland on Thursday, the planned surge in enforcement had sparked protests near the entrance to Coast Guard Island, and drew widespread condemnation from local liberal officials and immigrant advocacy organizations.
On Thursday night, security officers at the base opened fire on the driver of a U-Haul truck who was reversing the truck toward them, wounding the driver and a civilian nearby. The FBI is investigating that incident.
Some liberal officials had warned that federal agents who violated the rights of Californians could face consequences — even possible arrest — from local law enforcement, which drew condemnation from federal officials.
Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche responded with a scathing letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and others on Thursday in which he wrote that any attempt by local law enforcement to arrest federal officers doing their jobs would be viewed by the Justice Department as “both illegal and futile” and as part of a “criminal conspiracy.”
Blanche wrote that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution precludes any federal law enforcement official to be “held on a state criminal charge where the alleged crime arose during the performance of his federal duties,” and that the Justice Department would pursue legal action against any state officials who advocate for such enforcement.
“In the meantime, federal agents and officers will continue to enforce federal law and will not be deterred by the threat of arrest by California authorities who have abdicated their duty to protect their constituents,” Blanche wrote.
The threat of arrest for federal officers had originated in part with San Francisco Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins, who had written on social media that if federal agents “come to San Francisco and illegally harass our residents … I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day.”
Los Angeles County prosecutors unsealed an indictment Friday against a former LAPD officer responsible for the 2015 on-duty shooting of an unarmed man in Venice.
The ex-cop, Clifford Proctor, pleaded not guilty to the charges during a brief hearing in a downtown courtroom.
Wearing an orange jumpsuit, Proctor, 60, leaned over several times to whisper to his attorney but otherwise said little during the hearing, a portion of which was held behind closed doors. He waived a reading of the indictment. He will remain in custody with no bail, and is expected to return to court for a hearing early next month.
Proctor’s lawyer, Anthony “Tony” Garcia, said he would reserve comment until he’d had a chance to review the case.
But he questioned the timing of the charges, which came more than a decade after the incident in question.
The L.A. County District Attorney’s office reviewed the case when it was fresh and “determined there was nothing to proceed,” Garcia said.
Proctor was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport last week when U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents noticed he had an active warrant. Proctor has been living abroad for several years, according to sources who were not authorized to speak publicly about the pending case.
Proctor resigned from the LAPD in 2017. While still with the department, he shot and killed Brendon Glenn, a 29-year-old homeless man, after a dispute outside of a Venice bar in 2015. Glenn and his dog had been kicked out of the Bank of Venice restaurant for causing a disturbance.
Proctor and Glenn got into an argument and the officer ordered Glenn to leave the area. Glenn responded by hurling several racial epithets at Proctor. Both men are Black, according to court records.
Glenn then got into an argument with a bouncer outside of a different bar, and Proctor and his partner moved to make an arrest. During the ensuing struggle, Proctor shot Glenn twice in the back. Proctor alleged Glenn reached for his partner’s gun, but footage from the scene appeared to contradict that claim.
Glenn’s hand was never seen “on or near any portion” of the holster, according to a report made by the city’s Police Commission in 2016, and Proctor’s partner never made “any statements or actions” suggesting Glenn was trying to take the gun.
Former LAPD Chief Charlie Beck called for Proctor to be charged with manslaughter in the wake of public outrage over the killing, but ex-Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey declined to prosecute. After being elected on a police accountability platform in 2020, her successor, George Gascón hired a special prosecutor to reexamine charges against several L.A. County law enforcement officers in on-duty killings, including Glenn’s death.
Last year, sources told The Times that a warrant had been issued for Proctor’s arrest. Gascón and his chosen special prosecutor, Lawrence Middleton, repeatedly declined to comment on the case.
Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, who fired Middleton shortly after taking office last year, has not given updates on the case. Hochman hired another special prosecutor, Michael Gennaco, to oversee Middleton’s pending cases.
NORFOLK, Va. — New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James is set to make her first court appearance in a mortgage fraud case on Friday, the third adversary of President Trump to face a judge on federal charges in recent weeks.
James was indicted earlier this month on charges of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution in connection with a 2020 home purchase in Norfolk, Va. The charges came shortly after the official who had been overseeing the investigation was pushed out by the Trump administration and the Republican president publicly called on the Justice Department to take action against James and other political foes.
James, a Democrat who has sued Trump and his administration dozens of times, has denied wrongdoing and decried the indictment as “nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.”
The indictment stems from James’ purchase of a modest house in Norfolk, where she has family. During the sale, she signed a standard document called a “second home rider” in which she agreed to keep the property primarily for her “personal use and enjoyment for at least one year,” unless the lender agreed otherwise.
Rather than using the home as a second residence, the indictment alleges, James rented it out to a family of three. According to the indictment, the misrepresentation allowed James to obtain favorable loan terms not available for investment properties.
James drew Trump’s ire when she won a staggering judgment against the president and his companies in a lawsuit alleging he defrauded banks by overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements. An appeals court overturned the fine, which had ballooned to more than $500 million with interest, but upheld a lower court’s finding that Trump had committed fraud.
James’ indictment followed the resignation of Erik Siebert as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after he resisted Trump administration pressure to bring charges. Siebert was replaced with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide and former Trump lawyer who had never previously served as a federal prosecutor and presented James’ case to the grand jury herself.
On Thursday, lawyers for James asked for an order prohibiting prosecutors from disclosing to the news media information about the investigation, or materials from the case, outside of court.
The motion followed the revelation from earlier this week that Halligan contacted via an encrypted text messaging platform a reporter from Lawfare, a media organization that covers legal and national security issues, to discuss the James prosecution and complain about coverage of it. The reporter published the exchange that she and Halligan had.
“The exchange was a stunning disclosure of internal government information,” lawyers for James wrote.
They added: “It has been reported that Ms. Halligan has no prosecutorial experience whatsoever. But all federal prosecutors are required to know and follow the rules governing their conduct from their first day on the job, and so any lack of experience cannot excuse their violation.”
The motion also asks that the government be required to preserve all communications with representatives of the media as well as to prevent the deletion of any records or communications related to the investigation and the prosecution of the case.
Separately on Thursday, defense lawyers said they intended to challenge Halligan’s appointment, a step also taken this week by attorneys for former FBI Director James Comey in a different case filed by Halligan. Comey has been charged with lying to Congress in a criminal case filed days after Trump appeared to urge his attorney general to prosecute him, and he has pleaded not guilty.
A third Trump adversary, former national security adviser John Bolton, pleaded not guilty last week to charges against him of emailing classified information to family members and keeping top secret documents at his Maryland home.
The Justice Department has also been investigating mortgage fraud allegations against Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California, whom Trump has called to be prosecuted over allegations related to a property in Maryland. In a separate mortgage investigation, authorities have been probing allegations against Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, who is challenging a Trump administration effort to remove her from her job. Schiff and Cook have denied wrongdoing.
Finely and Richer write for the Associated Press. Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.
SACRAMENTO — U.S. Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III announced today that he will resign at the end of July or in early August.
He told a news conference that an independent prosecutor investigating his personal financial affairs had found no grounds for legal action against him and therefore he could leave the Reagan Administration with a clear name.
“I have stated that I would not resign under a cloud or until I was completely vindicated,” Meese said, adding that the filing of a report by independent counsel James McKay–rather than an indictment–”fully vindicates me.”
Meese’s tenure at the Justice Department has been marked by repeated controversy surrounding his conduct and marred by resignations by senior personnel.
Won’t Be ‘Hounded’
Explaining why he had now decided to resign, Meese, who has always maintained his innocence, declared, “to allow myself to be hounded out of office by false accusations or allegations, unjust political attacks and media clamor would undermine the integrity of our system of justice which I have championed. . . . “
He said: “I have informed the President that I will be leaving the Administration towards the end of July or early in August.”
Earlier today, McKay ended his investigation of Meese without bringing criminal charges, but filed a report that raised questions about Meese’s ethics.
Sources close to the nearly 14-month-old probe said the secret report, totaling more than 800 pages, referred certain matters on Meese’s ethical behavior to the Justice Department for further review.
The department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, the agency’s internal ethics unit, is expected to review whether Meese violated federal ethics rules that prohibit actions that create the appearance of impropriety.
Allegations Detailed
McKay, who previously said he had insufficient evidence to indict Meese on most key matters under scrutiny, detailed in the report his probe into various conflict-of-interest charges against the attorney general.
It was filed under seal with a special panel of three federal appeals court judges. After Meese’s defense attorneys comment on the report, the judges will decide when to release it.
Meese, the nation’s top law enforcement officer who had President Reagan’s continued support throughout the inquiry, has denied any wrongdoing.
Most of McKay’s investigation centered on action Meese took as a government official that benefited his longtime friend and former lawyer, E. Robert Wallach, and on assistance that Wallach extended to Meese.
Wallach has been indicted on charges of attempting to illegally influence Meese and other government officials in helping win lucrative government contracts for the scandal-plagued Wedtech Corp., a defense contractor.
The most serious charge against Meese involved his role in a failed Iraqi oil pipeline deal that allegedly called for payoffs of as much as $700 million over 10 years to Israel and the Israeli Labor Party.
Meese received a secret 1985 memo from Wallach, who represented one of the project’s promoters, outlining the alleged payoff plan in return for an Israeli commitment not to attack the pipeline.
Meese then helped set up a meeting between a top White House national security adviser and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres to discuss the project.
Telephone Contacts Probed
McKay also investigated Meese’s meetings with regional Bell Telephone company executives while holding $14,000 in phone stock.
William French Smith, Ronald Reagan’s personal lawyer and a key adviser who placed his conservative stamp on federal policy during his term as U.S. attorney general, died Monday in Los Angeles.
Smith, 73, died with his family at his bedside at the Kenneth Norris Jr. Cancer Center at County-USC Medical Center, where he had been admitted Oct. 2, a hospital spokeswoman said.
A corporate attorney and senior partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Los Angeles’ largest law firm, Smith was an original member of the “kitchen cabinet” that helped guide Reagan from Hollywood to Sacramento and the White House.
As attorney general, Smith “brought talent, wisdom and the highest integrity to the Department of Justice,” Reagan said Monday. “Our nation was indeed fortunate to have a person of his excellence and patriotism in the cabinet. And we were made better as a country because of Bill’s work.
“More than a colleague, Bill was a valued and trusted friend and adviser. I often sought his wise counsel throughout my years in public life, and I was fortunate to have him at my side.”
As attorney general from 1981-85, Smith was a key architect of the Reagan Administration’s conservative shift on issues affecting domestic policy, including civil rights. While acknowledging that the Administration had been accused of “abandoning the federal civil rights effort,” he maintained that the Justice Department under his leadership vigorously enforced civil rights laws.
But more than half the lawyers in the Justice Department’s civil rights division signed a letter of protest after Smith reversed an 11-year-old policy that gave the Internal Revenue Service the power to deny tax exemptions to private schools.
Smith “served the United States with great distinction,” Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh said.
U.S. Solicitor General Kenneth Starr, Smith’s former law partner and his chief of staff in the Justice Department, said Smith was “an immensely gifted lawyer with marvelous sound and wise judgment (who was) unfailingly kind and thoughtful. He was always willing to listen to people, to hear people out.
“It was one of the ironies of his tenure that it was characterized by such far-reaching and profound change in the direction of the federal legal system . . . done in a quintessentially quiet, prudent and lawyerlike fashion.”
After meeting Reagan in 1963, Smith became the future President’s personal lawyer, confidant and business adviser. He has been credited with engineering Reagan’s rise to wealth at a time when the former actor’s primary income was royalties from movies.
Smith, drug store magnate Justin Dart, auto dealer Holmes Tuttle and oil, entertainment and real estate entrepreneur Jack Wrather were among the group of California millionaires known as the “kitchen cabinet.”
They rallied to Reagan after hearing him give a nationally broadcast speech in support of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential candidacy. The group persuaded Reagan to run for California governor in 1966, and remained his most important political advisers and fund-raisers. Tuttle once remarked that during Reagan’s eight years in Sacramento, the group “never made a move” without first asking: “Has this been cleared with Bill Smith?”
Born Aug. 26, 1917, in Wilton, N.H., Smith was a direct descendant of Uriah Oakes, the fourth president of Harvard College. His father, who died when Smith was 6, was president of the Mexican Telephone and Telegraph Co., whose headquarters were in Boston.
Smith graduated summa cum laude from UC Berkeley in 1939 and earned his law degree at Harvard in 1942. After World War II duty as an officer in the Naval Reserve, Smith broke away from his New England roots and settled in California. He had decided, he said, that his life “wasn’t going to be dictated to by my ancestors.”
He joined Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in 1946 and eventually headed its labor department, where he represented the firms blue-chip corporate clients in collective bargaining negotiations.
In 1968, Reagan appointed Smith to the University of California Board of Regents, where he reflected the then-governor’s hard-line views toward Vietnam War protesters. He opposed demands that the university discontinue nuclear weapons research, and he resisted efforts to force the university to divest itself of stock in countries doing business in South Africa.
Fred Dutton, a former official in the John F. Kennedy Administration who served as a UC regent with Smith, said the former attorney general’s philosophy “is that a small central establishment of a few people who have proven successful should run the rest of our lives.”
But other liberals on the board credited Smith with being free of ideological rigidity and willing to listen to all sides of any argument.
Once at the helm in the Justice Department, Smith systematically set about dismantling policies that had been in place for a generation.
In 1981, he summarized the direction in which he was taking the department:
“We have firmly enforced the law that forbids federal employees from striking. We have opposed the distortion of the meaning of equal protection by courts that mandate counterproductive busing and quotas. We have helped to select appointees to the federal bench who understand the meaning of judicial restraint.”
One of those appointees–one he took great pride in recruiting–is Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Smith was president of the California Chamber of Commerce from 1974 to 1975. He was a director of Pacific Telephone & Telegraph of San Francisco, Crocker National Bank and Crocker National Corp., Pacific Mutual Life Insurance of Los Angeles, Pacific Lighting Corp., Jorgensen Steel Corp. and Pullman Inc. of Chicago.
Smith’s first marriage ended in divorce. In 1964 he married his second wife, Jean Webb. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Stephanie Smith Lorenzen; three sons, William, Scott and Gregory; a stepson, G. William Vaughan Jr.; a stepdaughter, Merry Vaughan Dunn, and seven grandchildren.
WASHINGTON — A grand jury has indicted New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James on a fraud charge in the latest Justice Department case against a perceived enemy of President Trump, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on Thursday.
James was indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia on one count after a mortgage fraud investigation, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.
James’ office had no immediate comment Thursday.
The indictment, two weeks after a separate criminal case charging former FBI Director James Comey with lying to Congress, is the latest indication of the Trump administration’s norm-busting determination to use the law enforcement powers of the Justice Department to pursue the president’s political foes and public figures who once investigated him.
The James case remained under seal Thursday, making it impossible to assess what evidence prosecutors have. But as was the case with the Comey charges, the prosecution followed a strikingly unconventional case.
The Trump administration two weeks ago pushed out Erik Siebert, the veteran prosecutor who had overseen the investigation for months but had resisted pressure to file a case, and replaced him with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who was once Trump’s personal lawyer but who has never worked as a federal prosecutor.
Halligan presented the case to the grand jury herself, as she did in the case against Comey, according to the person familiar with the matter.
Trump has been advocating charging James for months, posting on social media without citing any evidence that she’s “guilty as hell” and telling reporters at the White House, “It looks to me like she’s really guilty of something, but I really don’t know.”
James, a second-term Democrat, has denied wrongdoing. She has said that she made an error while filling out a form related to a home purchase but quickly rectified it and didn’t deceive the lender.
Her lawyer has accused the Justice Department of concocting a bogus criminal case to settle Trump’s personal vendetta against James, who last year won a staggering judgment against Trump and his companies in a lawsuit alleging he lied to banks and others about the value of his assets.
The Justice Department has also been investigating mortgage-related allegations against Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook, using the probe to demand her ouster, and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), whose lawyer called the allegations against him “transparently false, stale, and long debunked.”
But James is a particularly personal target. As attorney general, she sued the Republican president and his administration dozens of times and oversaw a lawsuit accusing him of defrauding banks by dramatically overstating the value of his real estate holdings on financial statements.
An appeals court overturned the fine, which had ballooned to more than $500 million with interest, but upheld a lower court’s finding that Trump had committed fraud.
Richer, Sisak and Tucker write for the Associated Press.
WASHINGTON — Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi struck a defiant tone Tuesday during a Senate hearing where she dodged a series of questions about brewing scandals that have dogged her agency.
In many instances, Bondi’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee devolved into personal attacks against Democrats, who expressed dismay at their inability to get her to answer their inquiries.
“This is supposed to be an oversight hearing in which members of Congress can get serious answers to serious questions about the cover-up of corruption about the prosecution of the president’s enemies,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said toward the end of the nearly five-hour hearing. “When will it be that the members of this committee on a bipartisan basis demand answers to those questions?”
It marked a continuation of what has become a hallmark of not just Bondi, but most of Trump’s top officials. When pressed on potential scandals that the president has taken great pains to publicly avoid, they almost universally turn to one tactic: ignore and attack the questioner.
That strategy was shown in an exchange between Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who wanted to know who decided to close an investigation into Trump border advisor Tom Homan. Homan reportedly accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents after indicating he could get them government contracts. Bondi declined to say and shifted the focus to Padilla.
“I wish that you loved your state of California as much as you hate President Trump,” Bondi said. “We’d be in really good shape then because violent crime in California is currently 35% higher than the national average.”
In between partisan attacks, the congressional hearing allowed Bondi to boast about her eight months in office. She said her focus has been on combating illegal immigration, violent crime and restoring public trust in the Justice Department, which she said Biden-era officials weaponized against Trump.
“They wanted to take President Trump off the playing field,” she said about the effort to indict Trump. “This is the kind of conduct that shatters the American people’s faith in our law enforcement system. We will work to earn that back every single day. We are returning to our core mission of fighting real crime.”
She defended the administration’s deployment of federal troops to Washington, D.C., and Chicago, where she said troops had been sent on Tuesday. Bondi declined to say whether the White House consulted her on the deployment of troops to American cities but said the effort is meant to “protect” citizens from violent crime.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) asked about the legal justification for the military shooting vessels crossing the Carribbean Sea off Venezuela. The administration has said the boats are carrying drugs, but Coons told Bondi that “Congress has never authorized such a use of military force.”
“It’s unclear to me how the administration has concluded that the strikes are legal,” Coons said.
Bondi told Coons she would not discuss the legal advice her department has given to the president on the matter but said Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “is a narcoterrorist,” and that “drugs coming from Venezuela are killing our children at record levels.”
Coons said he was “gravely concerned” that she was not leading a department that is making decisions that are in “keeping with the core values of the Constitution.” As another example, he pointed to Trump urging her to prosecute his political adversaries, such as Comey.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) the top Democrat on the committee, raised a similar concern at the beginning of the hearing, saying Bondi has “systematically weaponized our nation’s leading law enforcement agency to protect President Trump and his allies.”
“In eight short months, you have fundamentally transformed the Justice Department and left an enormous stain on American history,” Durbin said. “It will take decades to recover.”
ARLINGTON, Va. — Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi suggested Tuesday that she has no plans to step down as she dodged questions about Jeffrey Epstein and her clash with a top FBI official, seeking to press ahead with a business-as-usual approach in the face of right-wing outrage that has plunged the Justice Department into turmoil.
Pressed by reporters during an announcement touting drug seizures, Bondi sidestepped questions about the fallout of the Trump administration’s decision not to release more records related to the wealthy financier’s sex trafficking investigation that has angered high profile members of President Trump’s base. With some calling for her resignation, Bondi made clear she intends to remain attorney general.
“I’m going to be here for as long as the president wants to be here,” Bondi said. “And I believe he’s made that crystal clear.”
The announcement at the Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters of recent methamphetamine and fentanyl seizures represents an effort by Bondi to turn the page on the Epstein controversy and show that the Justice Department is forging ahead after days of mounting criticism from figures in the MAGA movement furious over the administration’s failure to deliver long-sought government secrets about Epstein. But her refusal to address the turmoil may only further frustrate conservative influencers who have been calling for transparency and accountability over the wealthy financier’s case.
“This today is about fentanyl overdoses throughout our country and people who have lost loved ones to fentanyl,” Bondi said in response to a question from a reporter about the Epstein files. “That’s the message that we’re here to send today. I’m not going to talk about Epstein.”
Trump has been seeking to tamp down criticism of his attorney general and defended her again earlier Tuesday, saying she handled the matter “very well.” Trump said it’s up to her whether to release any more records, adding that “whatever she thinks is credible, she should release.”
Asked about Trump’s comment, Bondi said the Justice Department memo released last week announcing that no additional evidence would become public “speaks for itself and we’ll get back to you on anything else.”
The turmoil over the department’s handling of the Epstein matter spilled into public view last week with reports of a internal clash between Bondi and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino. Part of the dispute centered on a story from the news organization NewsNation that cited a “source close to the White House” as saying the FBI would have released the Epstein files months ago if it could have done so on its own. The story included statements from Bondi, Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel refuting the premise, but not Bongino.
Asked Tuesday whether she believes Bongino should remain in his role, Bondi said only that she would not discuss personnel matters. Bondi stressed that she had spent the morning with Patel, adding that: “I think we all are committed to working together now to make America safe again and that’s what we’re doing.”
Bondi had already been under scrutiny after an earlier document release in February that she hyped and handed out in binders to conservative influencers at the White House lacked any new revelations. When that first release flopped, Bondi accused officials of withholding files from her and claimed that the FBI later turned over a “truckload” of evidence with thousands of pages of additional documents.
Despite promises that more files were on their way to the public, however, the Justice Department determined after a months-long review that no “further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,” according to the memo released last week.
When President Trump deployed the National Guard to quell protests last month against immigration raids unfolding across Los Angeles County, he claimed widespread lawlessness forced him to send in the troops.
Days later, L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman stepped in front of news cameras to announce charges against people who allegedly attacked police during the demonstrations. He avoided mentioning Trump or the swarms of masked federal agents descending on parks, workplaces and schools, but tried to push back against the White House’s chaos narrative.
Noting that the unrest was confined to a small section of downtown, Hochman promised to hold the lawbreakers accountable and disputed that Los Angeles was “under siege.”
Reflecting on the moment in a recent interview with The Times, Hochman said he wanted to set the record straight without igniting a partisan dispute.
“What I’m hearing and reading and seeing is a political discourse that I have no interest in engaging in,” he said. “But one that is misstating what the factual context is on the ground.”
A former Republican who rebranded as an independent last year, Hochman promised to “get politics out” of the district attorney’s office. He endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race but has stuck to his self-described “hard middle” since, focusing instead on restoring order to an office he criticized as being too chaotic under his predecessor.
Federal immigration agents near MacArthur Park in the Westlake area on July 7.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Now more than six months into Hochman’s first term, prosecutors and law enforcement officials say the new district attorney has delivered “a return to normalcy” after the contentious term of progressive luminary George Gascón. By repealing nearly all of Gascón’s sweeping policies, Hochman is allowing his prosecutors to mete out justice as they see fit, restoring a relative degree of harmony to an office that spent four years at war with itself.
But Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign is testing the limits of Hochman’s neutrality.
“When the head prosecutor in the county doesn’t take a position, silence may appear to the community as support,” said L.A. County Public Defender Ricardo Garcia.
Hochman said that his office is not collaborating with the federal government on immigration enforcement and that he would prefer if immigration agents let state-level cases play out before taking action.
“I’m doing my best to focus on my mission, which is public safety. There’s a lot of politics going on and a lot of noise above that mission, whether it’s the president squabbling with the governor, squabbling with the mayor or anybody else who wants to interject in the political discussions,” he said. “I’m going out of my way nowadays to keep our focus in this office on the public safety aspect.”
It was that focus that made Hochman speak up at the news conference. He recalled watching TV news and social media clips of the first weekend of protests that echoed Trump’s proclamations that the city might burn down.
“You’d swear to God, L.A. was under siege. I mean I got scared the first night,” he said. “I’m calling up my people and I’m saying, ‘Is this going on throughout the city and the county?’”
Superpowers, celebrity trials and stark contrasts
Hochman’s measured approach stands in contrast not only to Gascón’s but also to his counterpart’s at the federal prosecutor’s office in Los Angeles.
During a news conference on arrests of people who allegedly attacked police during last month’s protests, Hochman calmly laid out the legal reasoning for the various prosecutions during the politically charged events. By comparison, U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli took the microphone minutes later and parroted Trump verbatim before pushing a long-held conservative suspicion about out-of-state agitators causing violence.
Although Hochman talked as a candidate about crime in apocalyptic tones, took significant money from conservative megadonors and worked with fundraisers tied to Trump, his overhaul of the district attorney’s office has not resembled the right-wing makeover some feared it would. If anything, Hochman’s law and order orientation is in line with statewide voter shifts on criminal justice reform.
Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman announces “aggressive action” against retail theft during a news conference outside a 7-Eleven in May.
(Al Seib / For The Times)
Gone are Gascón’s reformist policies discouraging the use of cash bail and limiting the use of sentencing enhancements. The death penalty is back on the table, although Hochman has not yet pursued it against a defendant.
Six months into his term, data show Hochman is charging felonies at roughly the same rate Gascón did. Although the new district attorney vowed during his campaign to charge more juveniles as adults, so far he has pursued a total of five cases — the same number Gascón had at this time last year, according to a spokesperson for the office.
After Hochman wiped out Gascón’s ban on filing certain misdemeanors, prosecutors charged nearly 70% of all low-level cases presented by police in the first half of 2025, records show. Hochman says it’s a necessary step to deter criminals, but Garcia and other advocates warn it puts more people at risk of deportation.
Hochman says he’s merely enforcing the law, and often presents himself as a man trying to get the trains back on time. In his downtown office, a framed silver age comic book sits by his desk, chronicling the adventures of “Mr. District Attorney.” Hochman laughs when describing the 1940s hero who seems to share his straight-ahead approach to the job.
“He doesn’t have any superpowers,” Hochman says. “Turns out, he’s just a really good lawyer.”
In an attempt to win over rank-and-file prosecutors, Hochman filled his administration with office veterans. And he’s made a point of dropping in on trials large and small — from celebrity defendants to juvenile cases far from the headlines — to cheer on his staff.
“We’ve seen a return to normalcy. We have a general understanding of what the expectations are of us,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Ryan Erlich, president of the union that represents most of Hochman’s staff. “We feel the upper management understands the job that we do, and it allows us to communicate and work on issues.”
Marilyn Manson, Menendez brothers and political pitfalls
Good vibes aside, some of Hochman’s decisions have rankled line prosecutors and led to political pitfalls.
The office has been on the wrong end of several high-profile cases this year, leading some prosecutors to question why the district attorney’s even-keel behavior tends to falter when the lights are on brightest.
“He wants to be recognized, so he’s always involved in these high-profile cases,” said one veteran deputy district attorney, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “Sometimes to the detriment of the case.”
During his campaign for district attorney last year, Nathan Hochman spoke alongside actor Esme Bianco to criticize his opponent’s handling of a case involving singer Marilyn Manson.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
“You don’t parade people out. … I found that so deeply offensive,” said Lenora Claire, a former member of the district attorney’s office’s victim advisory board. “What was that choice other than being completely irresponsible? He hadn’t reviewed the case.”
Hochman said the case was handled appropriately and prosecutors made a decision not to charge that was “rooted in facts and the law, not a political agenda.”
Hochman’s personal involvement in the resentencing hearings for Erik and Lyle Menendez, the brothers who killed their parents in a pair of brutal shotgun murders in 1989, also drew scrutiny. The brothers were each serving a life sentence with no hope of release until Gascón petitioned for their resentencing last year, a move Hochman opposed both on the campaign trail and then in court.
Hochman’s interactions with the Menendez family drew allegations of bias and his decision to transfer the prosecutors who filed Gascón’s petition resulted in a civil suit. During one hearing in May, he personally took over arguments in the courtroom and said the brothers needed to show proper “insight” into their crimes, even after a judge repeatedly warned him it was legally irrelevant.
“When people say did you win or lose the Menendez case, I say we won. The defense was asking for immediate release through a voluntary manslaughter finding. The judge didn’t go there,” Hochman said.
Tougher sentences, ticked off attorneys
After a campaign fueled by pro-law enforcement rhetoric, some defense attorneys say Hochman’s election has emboldened prosecutors to become unnecessarily aggressive.
“They are focused more now on incarceration and high prison sentences, as opposed to probation and the opportunity for rehabilitation,” attorney Damon Alimouri said.
One of Alimouri’s clients, Gerardo Miguel, is currently awaiting trial in a vandalism and burglary case after allegedly smashing his way into a Los Angeles home while screaming, “call the police” before hiding in the victim’s bathroom, according to court records.
Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman outside the Van Nuys Courthouse during a hearing in the case of Erik and Lyle Menendez in May.
(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
No one was injured in the incident. Miguel did not steal anything, nor does he have a criminal record. Yet, Alimouri said, the district attorney’s office’s only plea offer would send his client to state prison.
“[The prosecutor] said, I’m concerned about the safety of the public, this guy could have done X, Y and Z,” Alimouri said of the plea negotiation. “But the fact of the matter is [my client] didn’t do X, Y and Z. He curled up in the fetal position and called for help.”
Garcia, the public defender, also expressed frustration that Hochman’s prosecutors have been fighting attempts to get defendants into the county’s Rapid Diversion Program, which allows defendants to get treatment without taking on a criminal conviction. The program has a 90% success rate, according to Garcia.
Hochman, who championed the use of some mental health diversion programs during his campaign, says it’s a lack of county resources that limits the use of alternative justice programs.
“We don’t have enough beds, anywhere in this county, for dealing with that whole population,” Hochman said.
Allocating resources is the job of L.A. County’s Board of Supervisors, a panel that leans heavily left. Hochman won’t face reelection until 2028, and until then observers say his centrism could be an asset.
“The advantage to being an independent is he can put the voters in the city before his political party,” said Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at the University of Southern California. “Anyone with a D or an R next to their name comes under immense pressure to toe their respective party lines.”
Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
A South L.A. recycling plant that has been accused of spewing toxic waste and metal projectiles onto the grounds of Jordan High School will be permanently shut down, according to a plea deal agreed to by the plant’s owners in court Tuesday.
Matthew and Gary Weisenberg — the owners of S&W Atlas Iron & Metal, one of the city’s oldest metal recycling facilities — each pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of unlawful disposal of hazardous waste and public nuisance. The corporation pleaded no contest to five felony counts of failing to properly dispose of hazardous waste.
In addition to shutting down, the company and its owners will pay around $150,000 in fines. They will also owe $1 million in restitution to the Los Angeles Unified School District and an additional $850,000 to the district attorney’s office, which will be split between government agencies and Watts community organizations.
The father and son will serve 200 hours of community service and two years of probation. They must also cease recycling material processing facility operations. The Weisenbergs maintain the right to operate a business on the parcel of land they own, but it cannot involve metal processing or recycling, according to the terms laid out in court.
The school district and city will have the right of first refusal to buy the parcel if the Weisenbergs ever look to sell their land.
L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman was in the courtroom Tuesday morning and held a news conference at Jordan High School later in the afternoon. He used the opportunity to warn “environmental criminals,” saying, “pay heed and notice to what is going on today.”
“They are polluting the land, the sea, the rivers and the air,” said Hochman. “Very often, environmental criminals think they will pay a fine here and there — that’s business. But they are putting their feet to the fire today.”
Deputy Dist. Atty. Benjamin Wright, who worked on the case, said outside the courtroom, “We are very pleased with the plea deal. The facility has been operating for so long. There have been so many instances of shrapnel flying onto school property. It’s very dangerous for the students, let alone all the hazardous waste.”
The Weisenbergs’ attorneys, Benjamin Gluck and Vicki Podberesky, had previously denied all wrongdoing by their clients.
“While it is with sadness that Atlas has agreed to close its recycling operations, this decision reflects the evolving land use along the Alameda Corridor,” wrote Gluck in a statement to The Times. “Our clients hope that the outcome of this case and the financial contributions Atlas is making will help support the Watts community.”
L.A. prosecutors first charged the Weisenbergs with nearly two dozen counts of failing to properly dispose waste in 2023, following years of allegations levied by community activists and school officials that the metal plant was belching poison onto students. Prosecutors alleged the plant exposed students at Jordan High School to several explosions, metal projectiles and lead levels nearly 75 times higher than what federal regulators deem safe.
As a result, a judge barred the plant from accepting certain types of canisters that might blow up, warning the Weisenbergs their bail would be revoked if they didn’t comply. In March, an investigation by the state Department of Toxic Substances found containers of acetylene, a highly flammable gas, on the plant’s grounds. L.A. County Superior Court Judge Terry Bork briefly jailed the Weisenbergs and days later order the plant shuttered for failure to comply.
For more than 20 years, community organizers and activists have fought to get the plant shut down.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency previously ordered the company to upgrade its system to stop chemicals from washing into storm drains and going onto campus. Prior soil samples reported from the high school also showed high concentrations of lead and zinc.
It’s a bitter feud the likes of which are seldom seen in law enforcement circles — or at least those that boil over into public view.
For over seven years now, Orange County’s top prosecutor and a decorated former cop have been locked in an acrimonious dispute that shows little sign of abating. Both parties have accused the other of fractured ethics and corruption, and even an independent arbitrator likened the situation to a simmering cauldron.
Damon Tucker, a former supervising investigator for the county, has alleged in a lawsuit that he uncovered potential evidence of money laundering, terrorist threats and extortion by his then-boss, Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer. Tucker claims in his lawsuit that Spitzer and others quashed the probe and then fired the investigator as an act of retaliation, leaving him humiliated and shunned by law enforcement.
Spitzer has publicly called Tucker a “dirty cop,” and accused him of working with his opponents — including former Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas — to launch an investigation to hurt him politically. Tucker’s behavior, Spitzer says, was a “disgrace to the badge.”
Now, in yet another escalation of this Orange County drama, Tucker has called on the California attorney general, the U.S. Department of Justice, the State Bar of California and other agencies to investigate Spitzer; the OCDA Bureau of Investigation Chief Paul Walters; and former Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Shawn Nelson, who is now an Orange County Superior Court judge.
“These allegations must be fully investigated,” Tucker wrote in a letter to those agencies.“Failure to investigate these men casts a shadow over our system of justice.”
Tucker’s call for an investigation of events dating back nearly a decade comes as the district attorney’s office is already facing increased scrutiny over its treatment of employees. Both Spitzer and Nelson face a potential civil trial next week over accusations they retaliated against female employees who say they were sexually harassed by former Senior Assistant Dist. Atty. Gary LoGalbo, a onetime friend of Spitzer’s who is now deceased.
Spitzer and Walters have declined to discuss Tucker’s accusations with The Times. Nelson, through a court spokesperson, also declined, saying judges were prohibited by ethical rules from discussing cases before the court or in media reports.
The California Attorney General’s office confirmed that it is reviewing Tucker’s complaint but would not comment further. The State Bar has also begun a review of the allegations and has requested more information and documentation, according to a letter reviewed by The Times. A spokesperson for the State Bar declined to comment or confirm whether a complaint was received, adding that disciplinary investigations are confidential.
The U.S. Department of Justice would neither comment nor confirm that it had received the letter. Tucker said he also sent a letter to California’s Commission on Judicial Performance. The commission also declined to comment.
A veteran investigator of nearly 30 years, Tucker was fired from the DA’s office in December 2020 over allegations he had initiated a unilateral investigation into Spitzer shortly after he took office.
Tucker sued the county — alleging he was fired and retaliated against for uncovering corruption — and in 2022 he won his job back, along with lost wages. Last year, he received a $2-million out-of court settlement from the county, according to Tucker’s attorney.
Kimberly Edds, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office, said a non-disparagement agreement signed by Tucker and Spitzer as part of the settlement prevented the office from commenting.
Tucker’s accusations date to an inquiry that was begun in October 2016, when another district attorney investigator, Tom Conklin, was assigned to assist the Fair Political Practices Commission in looking into allegations of campaign finance irregularities by Spitzer, who was at the time an Orange County supervisor but was considering a run for district attorney.
In his recent letter to multiple agencies, as well as in his lawsuit, Tucker alleges the investigation into Spitzer was left unfinished and, even though he and another investigator at one point suggested it should be forwarded to the FBI or state attorney general, the investigation was never referred to an outside agency.
A year after the 2016 investigation began, Conklin’s report was leaked to the Orange County Register, and the newspaper reported that Conklin had been unable to corroborate the allegations.
The leak came at a key time for Spitzer, who had just announced his campaign for district attorney. At the time, he told the Register the investigation had been politically motivated by his political rival, Rackauckas, and that nothing had been found. At the time, a spokesperson for Rackauckas confirmed the investigation but declined to comment on the allegations.
The leak sparked an internal investigation in the district attorney’s office and, when the initial investigator retired, Tucker was ordered to finish the case.
Tucker was tasked with finding out who leaked the report, but after reviewing the case, Tucker concluded that Conklin’s investigation was incomplete.
At least 10 identified witnesses in the case were never interviewed, and several leads had not been followed, according to an investigative summary written by Tucker, and given to a senior deputy district attorney he consulted with in the case.
During his investigation, Tucker reached out to superiors and colleagues at the district attorney’s office and said the allegations against Spitzer needed to be sent out to an outside agency, such as the FBI, for an impartial review.
Tucker said that as he continued to investigate and prepared to send the case to an outside agency, things suddenly changed.
The day after Spitzer was elected district attorney in 2018, Tucker said Walters ordered him to stop digging into the accusations, and to remove any mention of Spitzer’s name from questions in his investigation, according to an investigative summary and sworn depositions, taken in Tucker’s lawsuit against the county. Two days later, Tucker was removed from the case.
In a sworn deposition, Walters confirmed he ordered Tucker to remove questions about Spitzer from his investigation the day Spitzer became the district attorney-elect.
“That’s where I have to tell Tucker, ‘You can’t be asking all these questions about Spitzer,” Walters testfied. “It’s not the case. And I make him redact all that stuff.”
Tucker maintains that, up until the election, Walters supported his investigation.
“I was doing the right thing,” Tucker told The Times. “This should have been sent out.” Walters declined to respond to The Times about that accusation.
However, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office said it was Tucker who refused to turn over the investigation.
“He was given the opportunity and declined to do so,” said Edds, the D.A’.s spokesperson. “He was offered the opportunity repeatedly.”
Tucker disputes that assertion.
Spitzer has characterized Tucker’s investigation as being politically motivated, and has pointed out in sworn depositions that Tucker had donated to his opponent, Rackauckas, and was friends with Rackauckas’ chief of staff, Susan Kang.
According to county records, Tucker made a $2,000 donation to Rackauckas’ campaign in August 2018, after he’d been assigned to investigate the leak.
Tucker had also been critical of Spitzer during the campaign in multiple Facebook posts, before and after he took up the case.
“I think they sent him off on this fishing expedition to get something on me after the primary election in 2018,” Spitzer said in a deposition. “He’s investigating me while he’s making a major campaign contribution to my opponent? That’s not objective.”
