AG Rob Bonta orders sheriff’s investigators to “cease investigative activity” and refrain from public statements about the case.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, right, talks with her spokesperson, Barbara Osborn, following the search at her Santa Monica home. Kuehl is using a borrowed phone as hers was confiscated during the search. Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators served a search warrant at Kuehl’s home early Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022.
In Tuesday’s letter responding to that request, Bonta wrote that his office would look into those allegations, but he said since that matter is directly tied to the underlying investigation into Kuehl, Metro, Kuehl’s close friend Patricia Giggans and Giggans’ nonprofit group Peace Over Violence, he would take over that probe as well.
A Metro whistleblower, Jennifer Loew, sparked the investigation with allegations that Kuehl helped push the contracts toward Giggans and Peace Over Violence, an allegation Kuehl has strongly denied. Kuehl said she had no involvement in the contracts and did not vote on them as a member of the Metro Board of Directors.
Shortly before Bonta’s letter to the Sheriff’s Department assuming control of the investigation became public, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge issued a ruling blocking sheriff’s investigators from searching any computers seized from Kuehl or Metro during last week’s raids. The ruling by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Ryan mirrored one he issued last week
Kuehl has suggested that the judge who signed off on the search warrants served last week, Craig Richman, is a longtime associate of one of the sheriff’s lead investigators in the case, Detective Mark Lillienfeld.from the supervisor’s home “shockingly overbroad,” noting deputies took recordings of “Broadside,” a television show Kuehl starred in during the 1960s, and materials related to a UCLA camp where the supervisor served as a student counselor.
“As Sheriff Villaneuva and the LASD are undoubtedly aware, in the ordinary course of her official duties, Supervisor Kuehl sends and receives attorney-client privileged communications to and from both County Counsel and the LASD Office of Inspector General, including privileged communications about ongoing investigations into both Sheriff Villanueva himself and the LASD,” O’Connor wrote.
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