LA City Councilmember John Lee faces $138K ethics fine over Vegas trip<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles City Ethics Commission on Wednesday found City Councilmember John Lee violated a series of governmental ethics laws and unanimously imposed a fine of more than $138,000.<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles City Ethics Commission on Wednesday found City Councilmember John Lee violated a series of governmental ethics laws and unanimously imposed a fine of more than $138,000.<\/p>\n
The fine was in connection to a 2017 trip he took to Las Vegas when he was chief of staff to his predecessor, former Councilmember Mitch Englander. Englander also went on the trip.<\/p>\n
Three men who sought business with the city provided pricey meals and expensive bottle service, as well as gambling chips to Lee, according to the commission.<\/p>\n
The panel found Lee committed two counts of violating the city\u2019s law prohibiting council members from accepting certain gifts and three counts of violating a disclosure law. It also found Lee misused his city position or helped Englander misuse his position.<\/p>\n
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City ethics investigators recommended the penalty and $138,124 fine \u2014 the maximum possible.<\/p>\n
The decision \u201cunderscores the importance of ethical and transparent conduct on the part of elected officials and other public servants,\u201d Manjusha Kulkarni, president of the Ethics Commission, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is essential to a properly functioning democracy that those who serve in positions of leadership and influence act in the best interests of the public, with the highest level of integrity, and not in ways that are designed to deceive and promote self-interests,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
In the past, Lee has denied he improperly accepted gifts, saying he made a good faith effort to pay his own way and, in some instances, declined to eat during meals with the men seeking business with the city..<\/p>\n
In a statement issued Wednesday, Lee, who represents the western San Fernando Valley on the City Council, blasted the commission\u2019s decision, saying it was unfair.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Commission rubber-stamped a biased investigation and blatantly ignored all relevant facts, including that the FBI never charged me for backdating any checks or aiding Mitchell Englander’s 2017 illegal activities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In 2020, federal prosecutors charged Englander with accepting $15,000 from one of the businessmen and obstructing the FBI\u2019s investigation into corruption at L.A. City Hall. Englander eventually pleaded guilty to providing false information to the FBI. He was sentenced to 14 months in prison.<\/p>\n
Lee called the investigation into him \u201cwasteful and political.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the commission\u2019s action was \u201cbut one step in the process of fighting these baseless charges.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI look forward to finally having an opportunity to have this matter adjudicated in a fair and impartial setting,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Any appeal would need to be filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LA City Councilmember John Lee faces $138K ethics fine over Vegas trip The Los Angeles City Ethics Commission…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[54759,54756,14564,48,52,51,47,54757,50,49,54758],"class_list":{"0":"post-100451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ethics-penalty","9":"tag-john-lee","10":"tag-l-a-city-council","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-la-headlines","13":"tag-la-news","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-los-angeles-ethics-commission","16":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","17":"tag-los-angeles-news","18":"tag-mitch-englander"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}