{"id":271058,"date":"2026-04-16T17:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T17:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/271058\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T17:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T17:15:08","slug":"ex-anaheim-chamber-ceo-todd-ament-outlines-arguments-to-judge-for-withdrawing-his-guilty-plea-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/271058\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Anaheim Chamber CEO Todd Ament outlines arguments to judge for withdrawing his guilty plea \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ex-Anaheim Chamber of Commerce CEO Todd Ament and his attorneys laid out their arguments in front of a judge this week for why Ament should be allowed to withdraw the guilty plea<\/a>\u00a0he entered four years ago in a deal with federal prosecutors<\/a> amidst an FBI probe into allegations of corruption in Anaheim.<\/p>\n

As part of the deal with federal prosecutors, Ament agreed to wear a wire that recorded conversations with then-Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu \u2014 an investigation that led to Sidhu\u2019s own guilty plea and jail time<\/a> and the City Council canceling the Angel Stadium sale<\/a> Sidhu spearheaded \u2014 and pleaded guilty to submitting a false tax return, lying to a mortgage lender and to two counts of wire fraud.<\/p>\n

Ament gave testimony at Wednesday\u2019s, April 15, evidentiary hearing to withdraw his guilty plea<\/a>, which got started in March, saying he\u2019d received poor advice from his previous attorney, who Ament said disregarded his \u201cstrong concerns about the accuracy of things that were left in the plea agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want to take the plea deal,\u201d Ament said while being questioned by Daniel C. Silva, one of his new attorneys. \u201cBut I was told that was the best I was going to do and that I\u2019d be a fool not to take it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ament\u2019s previous attorney, Salvatore Ciulla, when it was his turn for questioning, said Ament \u201ctook issue with some of the wording\u201d with respect to the cannabis related<\/a> fraud charge and whether work had been done by a cannabis task force; Ament asked for $225,000 from company employees to launch a task force and lobby the cities of Anaheim and Irvine to legalize retail weed sales.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors have twice recommended dropping the cannabis-related fraud charge, but Judge Aenlle-Rocha shot down those attempts.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cOn the other three counts,\u201d Ciulla said, \u201cno, he never indicated he was innocent or anything other than \u2018I did what it says.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

As of their latest court filing in March, federal prosecutors are supporting a day in jail, or time served, for Ament, as a reward for his cooperation.<\/p>\n

Running out of time on Wednesday, the evidentiary hearing was scheduled to carry over into next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ex-Anaheim Chamber of Commerce CEO Todd Ament and his attorneys laid out their arguments in front of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,15261,165,164,7,1312,100,611,136],"class_list":["post-271058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-city-hall","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-california","tag-courts","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271058","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=271058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}