Former L.A Councilman Jose Huizar to be sentenced Friday

Former Los Angeles City Councilmember Jose Huizar, awaiting sentencing in a sprawling criminal case, asked a judge for leniency on Thursday, saying “I lost everything.”

In a letter to U.S. District Court Judge John F. Walter, Huizar apologized to his family, his former constituents and the city, saying he has paid a huge price — losing his reputation and his ability to provide for his family, harming his children’s future and their mental health.

“My whole life has been turned upside down and I regret ever having departed from the values that brought me to public service in the first place,” he wrote. “I have caused unanticipated collateral damage to people and institutions I care about.”

The five-page letter was filed with the court one day before Huizar’s sentencing in a federal case that focuses on various types of bribes offered by real estate developers with projects in Huizar’s downtown district. In the letter, parts of which were redacted, Huizar said his own weakness had forever changed his life.

“Shiny things were dangled in front of me and I could not resist temptation,” wrote Huizar, who pleaded guilty to racketeering and tax evasion charges last year. “The money, the fancy dinners, luxury flights. It was there for the taking and I was not strong enough to say no.”

Huizar has asked for no more than nine years in prison. Federal prosecutors are seeking 13 years, arguing that a strong sentence will serve as a deterrent against future public corruption.

Prosecutors said Huizar monetized his government position for years, securing more than $1.5 million in cash bribes, gambling chips, luxury hotel stays, political contributions, prostitute services, expensive meals and other financial benefits from developers with projects in his district.

“If anyone dared rebuff his call to pay bribes, he punished them and their city projects, threatening developers with indefinitely delayed projects and financial peril,” they wrote.

The U.S. Department of Justice also wants Huizar, who served on the council from 2005 to 2020, to pay more than $1 million in restitution to the city of Los Angeles.

Friday’s sentencing will cap a sweeping corruption inquiry that began in 2015, the year FBI agents received a tip about Huizar’s gambling activities inside a luxury casino in Las Vegas. Years later, he and a number of City Hall figures — most of them involved in the approval of residential towers or high-rise hotels — were arrested and eventually convicted of various crimes.

Councilmember Mitchell Englander pleaded guilty in 2020 to giving false information to investigators after FBI agents inquired about his own Vegas trip in 2017, during which he received cash in an envelope in a casino bathroom. George Esparza, a former Huizar aide who transported liquor boxes full of cash, is awaiting sentencing on a racketeering charge.

A developer, a former lobbyist, a land-use consultant, a Chinese-based real estate company and even Huizar’s older brother, Salvador Huizar, have either pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury.

Still to come is the case of former Deputy Mayor Raymond Chan, who is facing bribery, racketeering and wire fraud charges. That case ended in a mistrial last year, after Chan’s lawyer suffered a medical emergency that left him unable to keep representing him in court.

One figure in the corruption inquiry may never face a jury. Chinese billionaire developer Wei Huang, who helped Huizar secure $600,000 to pay off to a onetime aide who had accused him of sexual harassment, is on the run and considered a fugitive, according to the Department of Justice.

For years, Huizar headed the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee, which served as a critical gatekeeper for large-scale development projects across the city.

In his plea agreement, filed last year, Huizar admitted he took part in a criminal enterprise in which lobbyists, real estate consultants and others engaged in a pay-to-play scheme.

Huizar repeatedly extracted bribes — in some cases enriching himself personally, in other cases collecting campaign donations — from downtown developers eager to win city approval for their projects or seeking other government acts, according to his plea agreement.

One proposed project, later abandoned, was a 77-story hotel tower planned on Figueroa Street. Another was a 20-story residential building proposed for Olympic Boulevard. A third was a 35-story tower, now under construction, in the Arts District. A fourth had been planned across from the L.A. Live entertainment complex.

Huizar, 55, was born in a rural village in Mexico, just a few years before his family immigrated to the U.S. According to family members, his parents worked long hours at menial jobs while raising their children. He excelled at school and graduated from a string of top-tier colleges: UC Berkeley, then Princeton University and finally UCLA School of Law.

In 2001, Huizar was elected to a seat on the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Four years later, he joined the council, representing such neighborhoods as Boyle Heights, El Sereno and Eagle Rock. He won a third and final term in 2015, handily defeating former county Supervisor Gloria Molina, a veteran Eastside politician.

In their bid for leniency, Huizar’s defense team pointed out that he is a first-time offender and a father of school-age children.

They pointed to Huizar’s work fostering what they called the “DTLA Renaissance” — the pre-COVID pandemic real estate boom that brought foreign investment and gleaming towers to downtown. They argued that Huizar’s actions, while damaging to the public trust, were not “purposely evil.”

Huizar’s friends and relatives have also sought to emphasize his good deeds.

In one letter to the judge, former school board President Monica Garcia called Huizar a “trailblazing” board member who played a pivotal role in the push to build scores of new campuses. In another, Father Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, said Huizar has demonstrated humility and remorse.

“Clearly, he is a whole lot more than the worst thing he’s ever done,” Boyle wrote.

In yet another letter, Huizar’s elderly mother, Isidra Huizar, implored the judge to show mercy, saying her son routinely helps her with her dentist, her heart doctor, her optometrist, her prescriptions and other medical needs.

“I don’t even want to think about life without him,” she wrote. “I beg with all my heart to you judge don’t take him away from me, you don’t understand how I would suffer without him.”

In another court filing, Huizar’s legal team said their client had devoted himself to public service, “at great cost to himself and his family.” While on the council, Huizar developed personal relationships with numerous people — the kind that led to “the exchange of benefits and favors.”

“It was easy for lines to get blurred, and they did,” the lawyers wrote. “Indeed, this was true not only for Mr. Huizar, but was and almost certainly remains true for virtually all of the elected officials in L.A. and beyond.”

That assertion drew a strong reaction from council President Paul Krekorian, who voted to suspend Huizar on the day that he was arrested in June 2020. Krekorian, in an interview Thursday, called the claim “complete rubbish.”

“It’s actually shameful to try to equate these crimes with anything that would be seen as being normal in City Hall,” Krekorian said. “This is not normal. His conduct was an embarrassment to the city, a betrayal of the voters and a betrayal of all of us, his former colleagues. So to suggest that this is business as usual is utter nonsense.”

Federal prosecutors, in their written filing, said Huizar violated his oath of office and duty to his constituents “time and time again.”

Huizar placed “his own lust for money and power above the rights and interests of the people he was elected to serve,” they said.