Raymond Chan's lawyer Harland Braun was hospitalized during trial with only a few days of testimony remaining, and his son says he's unable to return to the courtroom.
So it sounds like Chan’s going to make the deal he should have in 2018, or they’ll go the Jose Huizar route and charge his kid, wife and Judo pals. Will he flip on others in the City Family who aided real estate corruption? Will Jose? And what about the stalled Assessor case?
If the following is accurate: 'Prosecutors had only two witnesses remaining when Chan’s lead lawyer, Harland Braun, was hospitalized on March 2., then the defense had not started.
Through all these trials, the FBI has been very careful to fashion cases so that no one close to Garcetti or Garcetti himself will be touched. That's like sending Capone's tax accountant to prison while Capone continued to be mob boss.
Excellent question. He's not the money behind the throne even though his Mom Sukey Roth is from an established LA family. It was either clothing or furniture; I've forgotten. Thus, he fits category of trust fund baby. His Dad is former DA Gil Garcetti -- during OJ Trial. Thus, no real money there.
He's close to CIM Group, developers who were 86'ed from Israel due to corruption centering around LA City Hall, but before Garcetti was mayor. Juri Ripinsky was one of his fundraiser and had spent two years in Leavenworth due convictions for bank and real estate fraud and Garcetti got Ripinsky the Paseo Plaza project at Sear's old site in Hywd on Santa Monica. Nothing came of that under Ripinsky and now CIM has it.
Thus, I'd say Garcetti was front man, climbing the ladder. Englander, Huizar, Chan, Leung, were dispensable, but Garcetti was too crucial to holding the entire corrupt enterprise together for the FBI to take down. Corrupt as LA City Council was under Garcetti, we never had anything like the vicious attack on Nury Martinez, Gil Cedillo, and Kevin de Leon by someone else named Martinez with help of KNOCK LA. But, gets us into an entirely different brouhaha.
The govt. is not going after any of Huizar's kids or judo pals. Huizar's mother and brother are the only family member's in hot water. Huizar's brother wrote checks in exchange for cash and his mother had shoebox full of bribe money stashed under the floorboards. Whose fault is it that they got caught up in Huizar's amateur hour of money laundering and tax evasion? Only one person - Jose Huizar.
We're familiar with who was pressured in Huizar's case. Some of the people who can be pressured in Chan's case are his lawyer son, his wife and Yan Yan, who practices judo at Chan's house and signed the $600,000 loan for Huizar to pay off Francine Godoy. There's no reason to think the Feds won't follow the same script they did with Huizar to get Chan to plead guilty.
The following is not a statement of fact. It is an opinion. A conjecture. 100% speculative:
"The judge ordered Chan to hire a new lawyer by April 24."
“Mr. Chan, you’re to be involved in interviewing attorneys. I urge you to complete this process so we can get this trial back on track,” Walter said.
OOOOhhh, scary! Judge Walters is so very, very strict.
Look what he did with Jose Huizar.
Granted a postponement of one year for trial start date.
Twice!
Request to postpone sentencing?
Sure, no problem - is 5 months enough?
Mistrial - this part of the show is over because the purpose was accomplished.
The purpose - the Councilman Jose Huizar telenovela.
Hang the laundry on the line for all to see.
The Fresh Prince of Boyle Heights.
Princeton educated barrio boy who can't keep his zipper closed.
The man who would be Mayor - a sleazy goofball, jackass who brings shame and humiliation to his loyal spouse and gets his mother and brother mixed up with the Feds.
A wonderful laughingstock for all of City Hall to ridicule and enjoy.
Ray Chan, Harlan Braun running the miracle medical mistrial Chinatown Shakedown.
Braun's dissallowed defense is simply a side hustle, not for domestic consumption.
Big Bad racist, anti-chinese govt. prosecutors coming after Mr. Chan.
That's all they need to hear when its time for the chinese fugitive investors to kick-in for Braun's legal fees for Chan
And it will be a doozy.
Braun's tour-de-force of legal artistry.
170 meetings with defendant Chan, often for several hours at a time, before trial.
All the associated hours of legal research and preparation of filings and composition of baseless ad-hominem emails to the prosecution.
The $600,000 for the extra pie for Huizy will look like a bargain next to Braun's triple-padded invoice.
The invoice will contain enough porkfat to cover the decimated book-value of Braun's reputation and the plain paper bag for Walters.
Judge Walters has enough postponements and continuances and rescheduling orders left in his magic bag to take this case until his retirement, when he can then hand it off to another judge. However, Democrat crooks will get their best possible deal under a Democrat Administration, so expect everything in this case to get wrapped up by the time of next year's general election.
Jose Huizar, Raymond Chan may need to settle for one or two years of confinement, at home under house arrest.
No one is going to spend one night inside an actual prison cell.
The harshest relative punishment will probably go to the low man on the pole, the govt's most cooperative defendant and star witness George Esparza.
Because that's the way it goes.
But he can still look forward to a 20- 25% payout of the total fee Huizar's agent negotiates with Netflix for rights to the screenplay based on their story.
Jose Huizar will soon be able to pay off his court fine and open his political consulting agency - once he signs the deal with Netflix for the cable series based on his story.
This trial is just as corrupt as the case being tried.
Judge Walter grants 6 and 12 month continuances in this case like an old man handing out Halloween candy to kids in costumes.
Walters said he would do everything possible to avoid a mistrial. Instead, he is the guarantor of the mistrial.
The evidence supporting a mistrial is all under seal. We have Judge Walters to vouch for it.
All of it. He won't even release the name of the doctor whose letter was accepted by the court.
Is the letter from an actual MD on staff at UCLA or a health practitioner who has never examined Braun, but merely reviewed some medical files sent and wrote the letter for a fee?
Why does Braun need to be capable of a full-time return to work for Chan's defense to proceed competently?
Most or all of the work has been done, hasn't it?
Braun has held 170 meetings with Chan, often for several hours at a time - according to the Statement Of Facts in the request for mistrial.
With all of the defense attorney notes from those meetings, Chan should receive an excellent defense effort overseen by Braun from his home where he is recuperating.
Or does Braun's current medical condition entail significant cognitive impairment?
There has been no admission of that yet.
There is also no evidence that Harlan Braun has any other clients to represent as an attorney or that Braun hasn't effectively been retired from practice prior to his current role as ersatz attorney for Ray Chan.
What about the team, Judge Walters?
Isn't this the time to call upon the Braun and Braun team to carry forward the effort for defendant Chan - so as to not have wasted all of the time of the jury, the prosecution, the witnesses who testified, the court.
Correction: not the prosecution. They have no complaint about wasting their time. They understand their role in a corrupt trial and their paycheck remains the same at the end of each month.
Obviously, Judge Walters is extremely partial to Mr. Braun - easily tolerating his malfeasance of protocol and violations of procedure, preparing and submitting a filing for the defendant when Braun failed to, accepting questionable Statements Of Fact without reservation.
Mr. Braun could at least make a most modest effort to uphold a claim that this trial and mistrial isn't thoroughly corrupt by simply cleaning up his website a tiny bit.
From Attorney Braun's website:
"The talented attorneys at Braun & Braun have both the skill and the experience to solve a variety of complex legal issues and achieve successful results for our clients. We represent large corporations, small businesses, and individual clients, all of whom rest assured knowing that they have a competent team of skilled trial lawyers behind them."
Where is the team of skilled trial lawyers standing behind Ray Chan?
Thank for for some of the behind the scenes behavior. As you may know, Chan admitted to violating election laws by giving thousands of dollar to his son, who at the time was a paid intern at Millennium's law firm Shep Mullin, and his son then donated the money ($6,500.00) to Garcetti, who supported the Millennium Project in Hollywood's CD 13, where Garcetti was Councilmember. To cloud the already murky ethical waters at LA city hall, She Mull represented Millennium before Judge James Chalfant and Chan was the point man at LA city hall LABDS who insisted the Hywd Fault LINE was not near the Millennium Project. Interestingly, Chalfant skirted to Fault Line Issue and rejected the EIR on the basis of traffic congestion on the Hywd freeway an the LOS gridlock, it would bring to surface streets near the freeway on and off ramps. (I had submitted some of the data about the traffic congestion for the administrative record.) Chaflant has been known to base his rulings on who's the law firm and not on the facts or law. Thus, it was strange, or maybe not so strange, that Chalfant poo-pooed the earthquake data from the state because that would have impugned Chan's credibility which would then make the illegal campaign contribution by Chan's son of public interest. https://bit.ly/3oaAxc2
It seems that it was hands off Chan as long as he was with Garcetti, as assist mayor after LADBS, but when he later was with Huizar, whom Garcetti was got to neutralized politically, then teh Feds decided to go after Chan -- or that seems to be the tea leaves.
I know that in 2010, when I was speaking with the FBI about Garcetti appraisal frauds at 1601 N Vine, the FBI said they were only interested in what I knew about Chinese investors in DTLA. I knew nothing. Also, Samuel Leong got in trouble for Sea Breeze, but his being Chinese may be coincidental. The LA Times article was probably why they felt that they had to give him a slap on the wrist.
http://lat.ms/2es9m3t October 30, 2016, LA Times, A $72-million Apartment Project. Top Politicians. Unlikely Donors, Who Wrote the Checks to Elected Officials Weighing Approval?, by David Zahniser and Emily Alpert Reyes [Sea Breeze Project] I only mention this last oint since Baun talked about an anti-Chinese bias. I had wondered about whether the Chinese were a front for the Chinese govet to get a control of LA development.
BTW, the LA City Council is a criminal enterprise per Penal Code 86 and it appears that protecting that corruption has been the FBI's obsession for well over a decade. Has the FBI ever brought a case where the project had actually been unanimously approved by the city council so that the defendant could use that as some sort of defense during trial?
So it sounds like Chan’s going to make the deal he should have in 2018, or they’ll go the Jose Huizar route and charge his kid, wife and Judo pals. Will he flip on others in the City Family who aided real estate corruption? Will Jose? And what about the stalled Assessor case?
If the following is accurate: 'Prosecutors had only two witnesses remaining when Chan’s lead lawyer, Harland Braun, was hospitalized on March 2., then the defense had not started.
Through all these trials, the FBI has been very careful to fashion cases so that no one close to Garcetti or Garcetti himself will be touched. That's like sending Capone's tax accountant to prison while Capone continued to be mob boss.
But is Garcetti really the boss, or just the face?
Excellent question. He's not the money behind the throne even though his Mom Sukey Roth is from an established LA family. It was either clothing or furniture; I've forgotten. Thus, he fits category of trust fund baby. His Dad is former DA Gil Garcetti -- during OJ Trial. Thus, no real money there.
He's close to CIM Group, developers who were 86'ed from Israel due to corruption centering around LA City Hall, but before Garcetti was mayor. Juri Ripinsky was one of his fundraiser and had spent two years in Leavenworth due convictions for bank and real estate fraud and Garcetti got Ripinsky the Paseo Plaza project at Sear's old site in Hywd on Santa Monica. Nothing came of that under Ripinsky and now CIM has it.
Thus, I'd say Garcetti was front man, climbing the ladder. Englander, Huizar, Chan, Leung, were dispensable, but Garcetti was too crucial to holding the entire corrupt enterprise together for the FBI to take down. Corrupt as LA City Council was under Garcetti, we never had anything like the vicious attack on Nury Martinez, Gil Cedillo, and Kevin de Leon by someone else named Martinez with help of KNOCK LA. But, gets us into an entirely different brouhaha.
The govt. is not going after any of Huizar's kids or judo pals. Huizar's mother and brother are the only family member's in hot water. Huizar's brother wrote checks in exchange for cash and his mother had shoebox full of bribe money stashed under the floorboards. Whose fault is it that they got caught up in Huizar's amateur hour of money laundering and tax evasion? Only one person - Jose Huizar.
We're familiar with who was pressured in Huizar's case. Some of the people who can be pressured in Chan's case are his lawyer son, his wife and Yan Yan, who practices judo at Chan's house and signed the $600,000 loan for Huizar to pay off Francine Godoy. There's no reason to think the Feds won't follow the same script they did with Huizar to get Chan to plead guilty.
The following is not a statement of fact. It is an opinion. A conjecture. 100% speculative:
"The judge ordered Chan to hire a new lawyer by April 24."
“Mr. Chan, you’re to be involved in interviewing attorneys. I urge you to complete this process so we can get this trial back on track,” Walter said.
OOOOhhh, scary! Judge Walters is so very, very strict.
Look what he did with Jose Huizar.
Granted a postponement of one year for trial start date.
Twice!
Request to postpone sentencing?
Sure, no problem - is 5 months enough?
Mistrial - this part of the show is over because the purpose was accomplished.
The purpose - the Councilman Jose Huizar telenovela.
Hang the laundry on the line for all to see.
The Fresh Prince of Boyle Heights.
Princeton educated barrio boy who can't keep his zipper closed.
The man who would be Mayor - a sleazy goofball, jackass who brings shame and humiliation to his loyal spouse and gets his mother and brother mixed up with the Feds.
A wonderful laughingstock for all of City Hall to ridicule and enjoy.
Ray Chan, Harlan Braun running the miracle medical mistrial Chinatown Shakedown.
Braun's dissallowed defense is simply a side hustle, not for domestic consumption.
Big Bad racist, anti-chinese govt. prosecutors coming after Mr. Chan.
That's all they need to hear when its time for the chinese fugitive investors to kick-in for Braun's legal fees for Chan
And it will be a doozy.
Braun's tour-de-force of legal artistry.
170 meetings with defendant Chan, often for several hours at a time, before trial.
All the associated hours of legal research and preparation of filings and composition of baseless ad-hominem emails to the prosecution.
The $600,000 for the extra pie for Huizy will look like a bargain next to Braun's triple-padded invoice.
The invoice will contain enough porkfat to cover the decimated book-value of Braun's reputation and the plain paper bag for Walters.
Judge Walters has enough postponements and continuances and rescheduling orders left in his magic bag to take this case until his retirement, when he can then hand it off to another judge. However, Democrat crooks will get their best possible deal under a Democrat Administration, so expect everything in this case to get wrapped up by the time of next year's general election.
Jose Huizar, Raymond Chan may need to settle for one or two years of confinement, at home under house arrest.
No one is going to spend one night inside an actual prison cell.
The harshest relative punishment will probably go to the low man on the pole, the govt's most cooperative defendant and star witness George Esparza.
Because that's the way it goes.
But he can still look forward to a 20- 25% payout of the total fee Huizar's agent negotiates with Netflix for rights to the screenplay based on their story.
Jose Huizar will soon be able to pay off his court fine and open his political consulting agency - once he signs the deal with Netflix for the cable series based on his story.
This trial is just as corrupt as the case being tried.
Judge Walter grants 6 and 12 month continuances in this case like an old man handing out Halloween candy to kids in costumes.
Walters said he would do everything possible to avoid a mistrial. Instead, he is the guarantor of the mistrial.
The evidence supporting a mistrial is all under seal. We have Judge Walters to vouch for it.
All of it. He won't even release the name of the doctor whose letter was accepted by the court.
Is the letter from an actual MD on staff at UCLA or a health practitioner who has never examined Braun, but merely reviewed some medical files sent and wrote the letter for a fee?
Why does Braun need to be capable of a full-time return to work for Chan's defense to proceed competently?
Most or all of the work has been done, hasn't it?
Braun has held 170 meetings with Chan, often for several hours at a time - according to the Statement Of Facts in the request for mistrial.
With all of the defense attorney notes from those meetings, Chan should receive an excellent defense effort overseen by Braun from his home where he is recuperating.
Or does Braun's current medical condition entail significant cognitive impairment?
There has been no admission of that yet.
There is also no evidence that Harlan Braun has any other clients to represent as an attorney or that Braun hasn't effectively been retired from practice prior to his current role as ersatz attorney for Ray Chan.
What about the team, Judge Walters?
Isn't this the time to call upon the Braun and Braun team to carry forward the effort for defendant Chan - so as to not have wasted all of the time of the jury, the prosecution, the witnesses who testified, the court.
Correction: not the prosecution. They have no complaint about wasting their time. They understand their role in a corrupt trial and their paycheck remains the same at the end of each month.
Obviously, Judge Walters is extremely partial to Mr. Braun - easily tolerating his malfeasance of protocol and violations of procedure, preparing and submitting a filing for the defendant when Braun failed to, accepting questionable Statements Of Fact without reservation.
Mr. Braun could at least make a most modest effort to uphold a claim that this trial and mistrial isn't thoroughly corrupt by simply cleaning up his website a tiny bit.
From Attorney Braun's website:
"The talented attorneys at Braun & Braun have both the skill and the experience to solve a variety of complex legal issues and achieve successful results for our clients. We represent large corporations, small businesses, and individual clients, all of whom rest assured knowing that they have a competent team of skilled trial lawyers behind them."
Where is the team of skilled trial lawyers standing behind Ray Chan?
Thank for for some of the behind the scenes behavior. As you may know, Chan admitted to violating election laws by giving thousands of dollar to his son, who at the time was a paid intern at Millennium's law firm Shep Mullin, and his son then donated the money ($6,500.00) to Garcetti, who supported the Millennium Project in Hollywood's CD 13, where Garcetti was Councilmember. To cloud the already murky ethical waters at LA city hall, She Mull represented Millennium before Judge James Chalfant and Chan was the point man at LA city hall LABDS who insisted the Hywd Fault LINE was not near the Millennium Project. Interestingly, Chalfant skirted to Fault Line Issue and rejected the EIR on the basis of traffic congestion on the Hywd freeway an the LOS gridlock, it would bring to surface streets near the freeway on and off ramps. (I had submitted some of the data about the traffic congestion for the administrative record.) Chaflant has been known to base his rulings on who's the law firm and not on the facts or law. Thus, it was strange, or maybe not so strange, that Chalfant poo-pooed the earthquake data from the state because that would have impugned Chan's credibility which would then make the illegal campaign contribution by Chan's son of public interest. https://bit.ly/3oaAxc2
It seems that it was hands off Chan as long as he was with Garcetti, as assist mayor after LADBS, but when he later was with Huizar, whom Garcetti was got to neutralized politically, then teh Feds decided to go after Chan -- or that seems to be the tea leaves.
I know that in 2010, when I was speaking with the FBI about Garcetti appraisal frauds at 1601 N Vine, the FBI said they were only interested in what I knew about Chinese investors in DTLA. I knew nothing. Also, Samuel Leong got in trouble for Sea Breeze, but his being Chinese may be coincidental. The LA Times article was probably why they felt that they had to give him a slap on the wrist.
http://lat.ms/2es9m3t October 30, 2016, LA Times, A $72-million Apartment Project. Top Politicians. Unlikely Donors, Who Wrote the Checks to Elected Officials Weighing Approval?, by David Zahniser and Emily Alpert Reyes [Sea Breeze Project] I only mention this last oint since Baun talked about an anti-Chinese bias. I had wondered about whether the Chinese were a front for the Chinese govet to get a control of LA development.
BTW, the LA City Council is a criminal enterprise per Penal Code 86 and it appears that protecting that corruption has been the FBI's obsession for well over a decade. Has the FBI ever brought a case where the project had actually been unanimously approved by the city council so that the defendant could use that as some sort of defense during trial?