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The former chairman of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission is under investigation for alleged retaliation against a Sheriff’s Department sergeant who faced scrutiny for his role in a unit accused of pursuing politically motivated cases.

Sean Kennedy, a Loyola Law School professor who resigned from the commission this year, received notification from a law firm that said it had “been engaged by the Office of the County Counsel to conduct a neutral investigation into an allegation that you retaliated against Sergeant Max Fernandez,” according to an email reviewed by The Times.

Kennedy and other members of the commission questioned Fernandez last year about his connections to the Sheriff’s Department’s now-disbanded Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail, a controversial unit that operated under then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

Kennedy said the commission’s inquiry into Fernandez appears to be what landed him in the crosshairs of the investigation he now faces. Kennedy denied any wrongdoing in a text message Thursday.

“I was just doing my job as an oversight official tasked by the commission to conduct the questioning at an official public hearing,” he wrote.

Last week, Kennedy received an email from Matthias H. Wagener, co-partner of Wagener Law, stating that the county had launched an investigation.

“The main allegation is that you attempted to discredit Sergeant Fernandez in various ways because of his role in investigating Commissioner Patti Giggans during his tenure on the former Civil Rights & Public Corruption Detail Unit,” Wagener wrote. “It has been alleged that you retaliated for personal reasons relating to your relationship with Commissioner Giggans, as her friend and her attorney.”

The Office of the County Counsel confirmed in an emailed statement that “a confidential workplace investigation into recent allegations of retaliation” is underway, but declined to identify whom it is investigating or who alleged retaliation, citing a need to “ensure the integrity of the investigation and to protect the privacy of” the parties.

“In accordance with its anti-retaliation policies and procedures, LA County investigates complaints made by employees who allege they have been subjected to retaliation for engaging in protected activities in the workplace,” the statement said.

The Sheriff’s Department said in an email that it “has no investigation into Mr. Kennedy.”

Reached by phone Thursday, Fernandez said that he doesn’t “know anything about” the investigation and that he has not “talked to anybody at county counsel.”

“This is the first I’m hearing about it,” he said. “Who started this investigation? They haven’t contacted me. I don’t know how that got into their hands.”

In a phone interview, Kennedy described the inquiry as “extraordinary.”

“I think that this is just the latest in a long line of Sheriff’s Department employees doing really anything they can to thwart meaningful oversight,” Kennedy said. “So now we’re at the point where they’re filing bogus retaliation complaints against commissioners for doing their jobs.”

Kennedy resigned from the Civilian Oversight Commission in February after county lawyers attempted to thwart the body from filing an amicus brief in the criminal case against Diana Teran, who served as an advisor to then-L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón.

The public corruption unit led several high-profile investigations during Villanueva’s term as sheriff, including inquiries into Giggans, the Civilian Oversight Commission, then-L.A. County Supervisor Shelia Kuehl and former Times reporter Maya Lau.

One of the unit’s investigations involved a whistleblower who alleged that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority unfairly awarded more than $800,000 worth of contracts to a nonprofit run by Giggans, a friend of Kuehl’s and vocal critic of Villanueva. The investigation made headlines when sheriff’s deputies with guns and battering rams raided Kuehl’s Santa Monica home one early morning in 2022.

The investigation ended without any criminal charges last summer, when the California Department of Justice concluded that there was a “lack of evidence of wrongdoing.”

Asked Thursday about the claim that Kennedy — who served as a lawyer for her while she was being investigated by the public corruption unit — interrogated Fernandez as a form of retaliation, Giggans called it “bogus” and said Fernandez “was subpoenaed because of his actions as a rogue sheriff’s deputy.”

Lau filed a lawsuit last month alleging the criminal investigation into her activities as a journalist violated her 1st Amendment rights. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta ultimately declined to prosecute the case against Lau.

Critics have repeatedly alleged that Villanueva used the unit to target his political enemies, a charge the former sheriff has disputed.

In October, Kennedy and other members of the Civilian Oversight Commission spent five hours interrogating Fernandez and former homicide Det. Mark Lillienfeld about the public corruption unit, of which they were members.

Kennedy questioned Fernandez’s credibility during the exchange, asking about People vs. Aquino, a ruling by an appellate court in the mid-2000s that found he had provided false testimony during a criminal trial that was “deliberate and no slip of the tongue.”

Fernandez argued that he had “never lied on the stand,” adding that “that’s ridiculous, I’m an anti-corruption cop.”

Fernandez also fielded questions about whether he was a member of a deputy gang. Critics have accused deputy cliques of engaging in brawls and other misconduct.

Fernandez said he was not in a deputy gang or problematic subgroup. But he acknowledged that he drew a picture of a warrior in the early 2000s that he got tattooed on his body.

A lieutenant tattooed with that image previously testified that it is associated with the Gladiators deputy subgroup, of which Fernandez has denied being a member.

Kennedy also asked Fernandez about a 2003 incident in which he shot and killed a 27-year-old man in Compton. Fernandez alleged the man pointed a gun at him, but sheriff’s investigators later found he was unarmed.

In a 2021 memo to oversight officials, Kennedy called for a state or federal investigation into the Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail and its “pattern of targeting” critics of the Sheriff’s Department.

Then-Undersheriff Tim Murakami responded in a letter, writing that the memo contained “wild accusations.”

On May 30, Wagener questioned Kennedy about “why I examined Max Fernandez about his fatal shooting of a community member, his Gladiators tattoo, his perjury in People v. Aquino, and why he put references to people’s sexual orientation in a search warrant application,” Kennedy wrote in a text message Thursday. “I told him I was just asking questions that relate to oversight.”

Robert Bonner, chair of the Civilian Oversight Commission, provided an emailed statement that called the investigation into Kennedy “extremely troubling and terribly ironic.”

“The allegation itself is rich,” Bonner wrote. “But that [it is being] given any credence by County Counsel can only serve to intimidate other Commissioners from asking hard questions.”

Before the sun rose Tuesday, Benito Flores fortified the front door of his one-bedroom duplex on a narrow street in El Sereno.

Flores, a 70-year-old retired welder, had illegally seized a home five years ago after its owner, the California Department of Transportation, had left it vacant. He’d been allowed to stay for a few months, then was directed to this nearby home owned by the agency, but now it was time to go.

Later in the morning, deputies with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department were scheduled to lock him out.

Flores clearly had other plans. Over months, he’d sawed wooden two-by-fours to use as a brace between the front door and an interior wall to make it harder to breach. He bolted shut the metal screen door. Once Flores was satisfied he’d secured the entrance Tuesday, he retreated to a wooden structure he built 28 feet high in an ash tree in the backyard.

If the police wanted him to leave, they’d have to come get him in his tree house.

“I plan to resist as long as I can,” Flores said.

The homemade structure, 6 feet tall and 3 feet wide, represents the last stand for Flores and a larger protest that captured national attention in March 2020. Flores and a dozen others occupied empty homes owned by Caltrans, acquired by the hundreds a half-century ago for a freeway expansion that never happened. They said they wanted to call attention to the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles.

The issue, Flores said, remains no less urgent today. Political leaders, he argued, have failed to provide housing for all who need it.

“They don’t care about the people,” Flores said. “Who is supposed to give permanent housing to elders, disabled and families with children? It is the city and the state. And they are evicting me.”

For the public agencies involved, the resistance represents an intransigence that belies the assistance and leniency they’ve offered to Flores and fellow protesters who call their group “Reclaiming Our Homes.” The state allowed group members, or Reclaimers, to remain legally and paying rents far below market rates for two years. Since then, the agencies have continued to offer referrals for permanent housing and financial settlements of up to $20,000 if group members left voluntarily.

Evictions, they’ve said, were a last resort and required by law.

“We don’t have any authority to operate outside of that,” said Tina Booth, director of asset management for the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, which is operating the housing program on Caltrans’ behalf.

Four Reclaimers, including Flores, remain in the homes.

Two have accepted settlements and are expected to leave within weeks. The final Reclaimer also has a court-ordered eviction against him, but plans to leave without incident.

Caltrans wants to sell Flores’ home and the other empty houses in El Sereno to public or nonprofit housing providers, which would make them available to low-income residents for rent or purchase.

Flores said evicting him makes no sense because the property is intended to be used as affordable housing that he qualifies for. Flores, who suffers from diabetes, collects about $1,200 a month in Social Security and supplemental payments. If he’s removed, Flores said, he has no other option except to sleep in his van — where he lived for 14 years before the home seizure.

“We are going to live on the streets for the rest of our lives,” Flores said of he and others evicted in the protest group in an open letter he sent to Sheriff Robert Luna last week.

Flores received advance notice of the lockout. His supporters began arriving at 6 a.m. Tuesday to fill the normally sleepy block. Flores already was up in the tree.

Within 90 minutes, more than two dozen people had arrived. They stationed lookouts on the corners. Some went inside Flores’ house through a side door to provide another layer of defense.

Gina Viola, an activist and former mayoral candidate, rallied the crowd on the sidewalk. It was “despicable,” she said, to leave homes empty when so many were in need. She said those in power needed to act, just as Flores and the Reclaimers have, to provide permanent housing immediately.

“This is part of a reckoning that is long overdue,” Viola said.

She pointed to the tree house, praising Flores.

“He’s a 70-year-old elder who has climbed … into the sky to make this point to the world: ‘This is my home and I won’t leave it.’”

The structure has been visible from the street for weeks. Flores had attached a sign to the front with a message calling for a citywide rent strike.

The tree house is elaborate. Flores used galvanized steel braces to attach a series of ladders to the ash tree’s trunk. Where the trunk narrowed higher in the tree, Flores bolted spikes into the bark to make the final few steps into the structure.

Inside the tree house and hanging on nearby branches were blankets, warm clothing, food, water and his medication. To keep things clean, there’s a wooden broom he can sweep out leaves and other detritus. Flores expected to charge his phone via an extension cord connected to electricity in the garage. He bolted a chair to the bottom of the tree house and has a safety belt to catch him should he fall.

Deputies had not yet arrived by 9 a.m. Flores descended, wearing a harness, to speak with members of the news media from his driveway. He spoke from behind a locked fence.

Flores rejected the assertion that the Housing Authority has provided him with another place to live. He said the agency’s offers of assistance, such as Section 8 vouchers, aren’t guarantees. He cited the struggles that voucher holders face when finding landlords to accept the subsidies.

“They offered me potential permanent housing,” Flores said of the Housing Authority.

Jenny Scanlin, the agency’s chief strategic development officer, said that Flores was offered more than two dozen referrals to other homes, but that he rejected them. Some involved waiting lists and vouchers, but others had occupancy immediately available, she said.

“We absolutely believe he would have had an alternative place to live — permanent affordable housing” — had Flores accepted the assistance, Scanlin said.

As Flores held court in the driveway, he rolled up a pant leg to show a sore from his diabetes and said that on the streets he’d have nowhere to refrigerate his insulin.

While Flores spoke, supporters were on edge. Representatives of the property management company milled a block away holding drills.

Around 9:45, two sheriff’s cruisers parked a block away. Three deputies got out and met the property managers, then walked to Flores’ home.

Flores’ supporters met them at the driveway. The deputies said they wanted to talk to Flores and brushed past to the locked gate. Flores told them to ask themselves why they needed to evict a senior citizen. The deputies responded that they had offered assistance from adult protective services and were following orders from the court.

A deputy handed Flores a pamphlet describing housing resources the county offered, including information about calling 211. Flores held up the paper above his head to show everyone. The crowd started booing and yelling “Shame.”

An officer then tried to reason with Flores in Spanish. But it was clear things were going nowhere.

“Suerte,” the officer said to Flores. “Good luck.”

Then they left.

The Sheriff’s Department could not immediately be reached for comment, and a Caltrans spokesperson referred comment to the Housing Authority. Scanlin said she expected the lockout process would continue per the court’s order.

Flores and his supporters believe sheriff’s deputies could return at any time. Some are planning to camp out at his house overnight.

The FBI will reopen cases related to the 2021 pipe bombings in Washington, D.C., the 2023 discovery of cocaine in the White House and the 2022 leak of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to end a woman’s right to choose an abortion. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo

May 26 (UPI) — FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said Monday the bureau will reexamine three high-profile Biden-era cases.

“Shortly after swearing in, (FBI Director Kash Patel) and I evaluated a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest,” he said in a statement on X.

The government will reopen cases related to the 2021 pipe bombings in Washington, D.C., the 2023 discovery of cocaine in the White House and the 2022 leak of the U.S. Supreme Court‘s ruling to end women’s 50-year-long right to choose an abortion nationwide.

“We made the decision to either re-open, or push additional resources and investigative attention, to these cases,” Bongino, a conservative social media personality nominated in February for the role by President Donald Trump, added Monday.

The suspect behind the planting of two pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic Party national headquarters around Jan 5, 2021, remains a mystery that occurred in the final days of the first Trump administration.

The other FBI case Bongino reopened was the leak of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 draft opinion in the Dobbs ruling, which overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, in what was the first-ever draft opinion leak in the high court.

“This was a singular and egregious breach of trust that is an affront to the court,” Chief Justice John Roberts said at the time.

Finally, Bongino cited the July 2, 2023, discovery of cocaine at the Biden White House in a case closed by the U.S. Secret Service after some 11 days. Investigators narrowed their list down to “several hundred” possible suspects with “insufficient” DNA samples on the bag.

“I receive requested briefings on these cases weekly,” Bongino says, adding that FBI officials are “making progress.”

A former senior member of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ staff has struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors, admitting he called in a fake bomb threat to City Hall late last year that was blamed on anti-Israel sentiment, federal prosecutors announced on Thursday.

Under the terms of the plea agreement, Brian Williams, a longtime law enforcement oversight official who served as Bass’ deputy mayor of public safety, agreed to plead guilty to a single count of threats regarding fire and explosives, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years. He is expected to make his initial court appearance in the next few weeks.

“In an era of heated political rhetoric that has sometimes escalated into violence, we cannot allow public officials to make bomb threats,” U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said in a news release announcing the deal. “My office will continue its efforts to keep the public safe, including from those who violate their duty to uphold the law.”

In a statement to The Times, Williams’ lawyer Dmitry Gorin said his client “has demonstrated his unreserved and full acceptance of responsibility for his actions.”

“This aberrational incident was the product of personal issues which Mr. Williams is addressing appropriately, and is not representative of his character or dedication to the city of Los Angeles,” Gorin said.

Williams was participating in a virtual meeting at City Hall on Oct. 3, 2024, when he used the Google Voice application on his personal phone to place a call to his city-issued cell phone, according to the plea agreement.

Williams admitted he left the meeting and called Scott Harrelson, a top aide to the LAPD chief. According to the plea, Williams falsely stated that he had just received a call on his city-issued cell phone from an unknown male caller who made a bomb threat against City Hall.

At no time did Williams intend to carry out the threat, according to the plea agreement.

About 10 minutes after calling the LAPD, according to the plea, Williams texted Bass and several other senior mayoral officials a message that read: “Bomb threat: I received phone call on my city cell at 10:48 am this morning. The male caller stated that ‘he was tired of the city support of Israel, and he has decided to place a bomb in City Hall. It might be in the rotunda.’ I immediately contacted the chief of staff of LAPD, they are going to send a number of officers over to do a search of the building and to determine if anyone else received a threat.”

Soon after, LAPD officers searched the building and did not locate any suspicious packages or devices, according to the agreement. Williams told the officers that a man called and said: “I’m tired of the city support of Israel, I have decided to place a bomb in City Hall. It might be in the Rotunda.”

Williams showed the officers the record of an incoming call, which appeared as a blocked number on his city-issued phone. According to the plea deal, that call was the one Williams had placed from Google Voice.

Williams followed up with the mayor and other high-ranking officials some time later with several other texts, saying that there was no need to evacuate City Hall.

“I’m meeting with the threat management officers within the next 10 minutes. In light of the Jewish holidays, we are taking this thread, a little more seriously. I will keep you posted,” the text read, according to federal authorities.

Federal authorities revealed they were looking into Williams last December, when FBI agents raided his home in Pasadena. It sent shock waves through City Hall and the Police Department, where many expressed incredulity at the prospect of a respected government official faking a bomb threat.

Before the case was turned over to the FBI, detectives from the LAPD’s Major Crimes Division conducted surveillance that led them to conclude that Williams was responsible for the bomb threat, sources previously told The Times.

Williams, who was the deputy mayor overseeing the police and fire departments, was on leave because of the criminal investigation in January when Pacific Palisades was engulfed in flames, killing 12 people and destroying more than 6,000 structures.

“Like many, we were shocked when these allegations were first made and we are saddened by this conclusion,” said Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Bass.

Bass named a former FBI official to replace Williams in early April. The official, Robert Clark, led anti-gang efforts in Los Angeles during his time with the Bureau before retiring in 2016 and serving as a law enforcement consultant and director of public safety for the city of Columbus, Ohio, among other roles.

Williams has held a variety of government positions spanning more than three decades. He had spent nearly two years as a deputy mayor in Bass’ office, working on issues such as police hiring, public safety spending and the search for a new police chief.

Previously, Williams was a deputy mayor in the administration of Mayor James K. Hahn, who held office from 2001 to 2005. Before that, he spent several years as an assistant city attorney in Los Angeles.

From 2016 to 2023, Williams was the executive director of the Sheriff’s Civilian Oversight Commission, according to his LinkedIn page.

Working in Bass’ office, Williams oversaw the Police Department, the Fire Department, Port Police, Airport Police and the city’s emergency management agency, according to his hiring announcement. He was also a member of the mayor’s inner circle, playing a key role in the monthslong search for a new police chief that ended with the hiring of Jim McDonnell.

When Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman was sworn in last year, Williams was the city official chosen to address the audience on behalf of the mayor. He was also a fixture at police graduations, news conferences, community meetings and other events across the city, often wearing a well-pressed suit and a bowtie.

Williams’ attorney Gorin called his client “a career public servant who has worked closely with law enforcement, community groups, public safety and prosecuting agencies throughout his many years in local government and has devoted his life to the service of others.”

Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said in a statement that Williams “not only betrayed the residents of Los Angeles, but responding officers, and the integrity of the office itself, by fabricating a bomb threat.”

“Government officials are held to a heightened standard as we rely on them to safeguard the city,” the statement read. “I’m relieved that Mr. Williams has taken responsibility for his inexplicable actions.”

A federal judge will decide later this week whether to allow an L.A. County sheriff’s deputy to take a plea deal that would spare him from prison time months after he was convicted of punching and pepper spraying an unarmed woman who filmed him during a 2023 arrest.

In a Monday court hearing, Judge Stephen V. Wilson and Assistant U.S. Atty. Rob Keenan sparred for more than two hours over the federal government’s highly unusual legal maneuver to offer L.A. County sheriff’s Deputy Trevor Kirk a misdemeanor plea deal just two months after he was convicted of a felony in the excessive force case.

Kirk was convicted in February of one count of deprivation of rights under color of law after he was caught on camera rushing at the victim, hurling her to the ground and then pepper spraying her in the face while planting a knee on her neck during a 2023 incident outside of a Lancaster supermarket.

Wilson said he would rule on the motion to accept the plea in the next “three or four days.”

He faced up to a decade in prison at sentencing.

But that was upended after the Trump administration last month appointed Bill Essayli, a former California assemblyman, as U.S. attorney for Los Angeles. On May 1, prosecutors reached a rare post-trial plea agreement with Kirk.

The government recommended a one-year term of probation for Kirk and moved to strike the jury’s finding that Kirk had injured the victim, which made the crime a felony. Kirk agreed to plead guilty to a lesser-included misdemeanor violation of deprivation of rights under color of law.

The agreement caused turmoil in the U.S. attorney’s office, with assistant U.S. attorneys Eli A. Alcaraz, Brian R. Faerstein, Michael J. Morse and Cassie Palmer, chief of the Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section, all withdrawing from the case. Keenan, the only assistant U.S. attorney who signed off on the plea agreement, was not previously involved in the case.

Alcaraz, Faerstein and Palmer submitted their resignations following the “post-trial” plea agreement offer, sources previously confirmed to the Times. A filing submitted in the case last week also confirmed Palmer is departing the federal prosecutor’s office.

The incident mirrored turmoil at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan that followed pressure by Trump Administration officials to drop a corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Essayli, a former California assemblyman, is a staunch Trump ally and hard line conservative appointed at a time when the President has sought to weaken the independence of the Department of Justice. He made the post-conviction plea offer to Kirk the same week Trump issued an executive order vowing to “unleash” American law enforcement.

In court Monday, Wilson grilled Keenan, appearing increasingly perplexed at the government’s logic in offering Kirk a deal. He questioned if prosecutors had a “serious and significant doubt” as to the deputy’s guilt and continually pushed Keenan to justify the deal.

“If the government hasn’t offered any explanation for its change of course, the court must grant the motion?” Wilson asked.

Keenan said he believed the court was legally obligated to do so, claiming the deal was “a pure exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”

In June 2023, Kirk was responding to a reported robbery when he threw a woman to the ground and pepper-sprayed her in the face while she filmed him outside a Lancaster WinCo. The woman — who is only identified in federal court filings as J.H. but named as Jacey Houston in a separate civil suit — matched a dispatcher’s description of a female suspect she was not armed or committing a crime at the time Kirk first confronted her, court records show.

But in a 31-page position statement filed May 13, Keenan dissected the victim’s actions leading up to and during the confrontation with Kirk. Keenan said Kirk used the pepper spray after “continued resistance by J.H.”

“In contrast to other excessive-force cases, defendant did not use pepper spray after J.H. was cuffed or otherwise secured,” Keenan wrote.

Keenan said the evidence didn’t show that Kirk sprayed Houston in the face with an intent to cause bodily injury. He also described her injuries as “limited in duration and severity” and said they did not constitute “serious bodily injury.”

In the filing, Keenan appeared to question the government’s evidence relating to a reported “blunt head injury,” calling it “vague and ill-defined even at trial.”

In court Monday, Keenan described Kirk’s use of force as “excessive, but just “barely so,” at one point attacking the credibility of the victim in the case, suggesting she exaggerated her injuries in a victim impact statement she made before the court.

Wilson did not accept that analysis.

“The jury was completely justified in finding he used excessive force in taking her to the ground and pepper spraying her,” the judge said. “Had he ordered her to be handcuffed … that would be a different case,” the judge said.

Earlier in the morning, Houston said Kirk should never be allowed to be a police officer or own a firearm again, given the “uncontrollable rage” he aimed at her on the day of the incident.

“I was certain that I was going to die,” she said, describing the moment Kirk grabbed her.

Houston’s attorney, Caree Harper, has said Keenan’s filing distorts the reality of what happened in the parking lot that day.

“J.H. is a senior citizen. She committed no crime. She had no weapon. She did not try to flee. She did not try to resist. J.H. sustained a black eye, a fractured bone in her right arm, multiple bruises, scratches, and significant chemical burning from the pepper-spray,” Harper wrote in a court filing. “J.H. screamed in pain and struggled to fill her lungs with oxygen.”

Wilson had previously denied a motion from Yu for an acquittal, finding that footage of the incident was sufficient evidence for a jury to find Kirk had used “objectively unreasonable force.”

“J.H. did not have a weapon, did not attack Defendant, was not attempting to flee, and was not actively committing a crime,” Wilson wrote in his ruling last month.

The judge also noted that, while Kirk acted aggressively toward Houston from the outset, his partner managed to lead the arrest of the other robbery suspect without using force.

Keenan painted the concessions Kirk made in the post-trial agreement as “significant.” He said Kirk was agreeing to admit that he “used unnecessary force” while attempting to detain Houston and that he did so “willfully.”

In early 2024, shortly after the Winco incident, Kirk was arrested by his own department on suspicion of domestic violence against his wife. His attorney dismissed it as a non-issue, noting the victim did not want Kirk to be prosecuted, contending the alleged abuse was reported by a third party. A spokesman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said the case was rejected due to insufficient evidence.

In her filing last week, Harper also said Kirk was arrested on allegations he threw his wife on the ground in January 2023. Harper alleged Kirk “threatened to bury [his wife] in the desert,” records show.

Sheriff’s department arrest logs only display the 2024 arrest. A sheriff’s department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Support for Kirk began gaining steam on social media after his indictment last September. In January, Nick Wilson, founder of a first responder advocacy group and spokesperson for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Professional Assn., wrote a letter to Trump urging him to intervene before the case went to trial.

Former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who has become increasingly popular in right-wing circles online, has also championed Kirk’s case, posting an Instagram video of himself and Wilson consoling the deputy at the courthouse after trial. Both Villanueva and Wilson have insisted Kirk did nothing wrong.

Villanueva, Wilson and Essayli were all present in court Monday. At one point Harper approached Essayli directly and asked about the legality of the plea deal he was offering.

Essayli, seated in a plastic chair because all of the benches in the courtroom were filled, threatened to have Harper removed from the courtroom. Harper noted that only judges and federal marshals have the right to remove someone from a courtroom. A U.S. Attorney’s office spokesman declined to comment.

Some deputies have also blamed current Sheriff Robert Luna for pushing federal prosecutors to go after Kirk, a fact Luna has denied. Some deputy groups have staged forms of protest against Luna as a result.

But in a sentencing recommendation obtained by The Times, Luna asked Wilson to sentence Kirk to probation, blaming his actions that day on poor training.

He noted prior department leaders had effectively ignored a monitoring agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that was meant to mandate reform policies on use-of-force issues at the Lancaster and Palmdale stations. Luna’s letter did not address whether or not Wilson should act on Essayli’s request to vacate the jury verdict.

“I’m not suggesting that the failures of the Department should immunize Deputy Kirk or any other deputy taking responsibility for their actions,” Luna wrote. “No deputy who is found by a jury to have used excessive force or who has agreed to a plea deal should have such immunity.”