Breaking: SIDHU GETS TWO MONTHS – Vern’s report from the Courtroom

Ha, we got the headline out first (Judge Holcomb lets you use your phone in the courtroom as long as you’re not recording) but I’ve been too busy to write out my notes till now (next day) so here are the basics from the Voice and Register:

• Voice of OC’s Spencer Custodio (who remembers dirty aspects of the Stadium deal even I had forgotten!)
• and Sean Emery writing at both the LA Daily News and the Register

When I walked into the courtroom, the first thing the bailiff asks is “Are you with the family?” “I didn’t know it was a funeral!” I said. Turned out eight, and later nine, family members of the disgraced mayor were sitting in the front. I got a seat behind Rohan, next to Cynthia Ward, and in front of Denis Bilodeau. Lots of familiar faces! And Harry was up there between his two attorneys, the distinguished old Paul Meyer and the more shamelessly chihuahua-barking Craig Wilke.

Harry looked worn out but sported a spiffy white goatee. When allowed to speak, he couldn’t emphasize enough how “ashamed” and “sorry” he was for all his crimes, which contrasted curiously with Meyer’s and Wilke’s insistence that his crimes were REALLY NO BIG DEAL; to wit:

• The insider information Harry shared with the Angels team was “really just public knowledge”… even though Harry considered it valuable enough to be worth a million in campaign contributions and then took pains to hide it when he learned the FBI was on to him;
• The documents Harry deleted in panic from his computer were “not essential or probative” … because the FBI was able to find them elsewhere no thanks to him – so no harm no foul, right?
• Harry’s request for a million dollars in campaign contributions was just humorous “boasting” … even though he repeated it three times to his political director Todd Ament and even instructed him to start with a request for three million so he could haggle down. Still, no harm no foul again, because the request was never made – well, duh, Ament was already state’s evidence.

(By the way Wilke named Jeff Flint, saying “he sent an e-mail to Todd Ament & Jeff Flint” … I’m getting tired of everybody writing “an unnamed Angels consultant,” when we all know it’s Jeff Flint – which is even sleazier since he WAS an Angels consultant as well as a criminal colleague of the Anaheim Chamber head Ament, the guy who co-ordinated all the PAC’s that got nearly everyone elected onto Council including Sidhu, Anaheim’s most powerful lobbyist at the time, and much more. The micro-managing dude who tried to put together a mock/rehearsal Council meeting for the final Stadium vote, and organized the “retreats” where the cabal would divvy up all of Anaheim’s expected revenue.)

So there we had the defense, who got to peddle their bullshit for nearly an hour. Who did the government have? Only one nice lady, an assistant US attorney named Melissa Rabbani. And what did she have to say? Well, really not much at all, no takedown of the defense nonsense. In fact she mainly complimented Harry for resigning in 2022 and apologizing a lot.

THIS just came out on the Register

(it was slowing me down not knowing if it’d be published or not)

OK, like I mentioned in the Register, Harry owes a BIG apology to Jose Moreno and Chris Zapata for calling them LIARS and TRAITORS to Anaheim during our Brown Act Lawsuit. Harry was the perjurer – the sale of the stadium WAS decided in closed session and violated the Brown Act.

Anyway Judge Holcomb didn’t fall for MOST of the defense’s sophistry, concluding “Mayor Sidhu BETRAYED the people of Anaheim, deleted documents and lied, and he does deserve a period of incarceration.” But he cut the prosecution’s recommended sentence in a quarter for only TWO MONTHS in prison – Harry’s gotta turn himself in on Sept. 2. Three and a half years after being charged; about five years since the offenses. So much for the lip service both Judge and prosecutor gave to lamenting “disparities” between sentences for white-collar and regular-people crimes.

But I said all that and much more in my Register column (which was supposed to be entitled “Sidhu Justice: Please sir, may we have some more?”) Let me just get down some stuff I left out of that……

Toward the end, the Judge asked Rabbani what must have been a standard question as it seemed like he was expecting a “no” – would there be any statements from victims? She and he were all “Well, the victim was sort of the city…” while 3 or 4 of us Anaheim residents started to stand up – we would have been happy to give a victim statement, but we were not allowed! Some things we would have brought up: . .

more to come