Here’s a riddle for you: What’s the difference between racketeering and politics?
Take your time.
Federal law, 18 U.S. Code Section 1861, defines racketeering activity to include “any act or threat” involving a long list of state and federal crimes. These may include obstruction of justice, obstruction of criminal investigations, money laundering, mail fraud, wire fraud, straw purchasers, extortion and certain false statements.
It’s stunningly similar to what’s needed for a long and successful career in California politics.
There is absolutely nothing to suggest that California Attorney General Rob Bonta is guilty of any crime. The fact that he recently paid $468,228 from his re-election campaign account to a law firm with a practice area in “government investigations” is absolutely not indicative of any activity by the attorney general that is in any way illegal. Everything’s fine.
The website for the law firm of Wilson Sonsini states that its “experienced team” of attorneys “have assisted clients facing all types of inquiries,” including “responding to letters of inquiry or subpoenas” in both “informal” and “large-scale, formal investigations, including parallel criminal and civil proceedings involving potentially significant financial penalties or other severe consequences.”
These are not the lawyers you call for a car accident. Bonta was contacted by federal law enforcement authorities as part of an investigation into bribery. Former Oakland mayor Sheng Thao was indicted in January, as were her partner Andre Jones and two longtime Bonta donors, Oakland business owners Andy and David Duong. The FBI raided Thao’s home and some of the Duongs’ properties in June 2024.
Bonta told KCRA’s Ashley Zavala, who broke the story of the massive legal bills, that he was a “witness who provided information that may be helpful to their investigation of other people.” He said the federal government first reached out to him because they thought he was “a victim of potential extortion or blackmail.”
Everything’s fine. The attorney general of California may have been blackmailed. Over what? We don’t know, and perhaps the $468,228 he spent on lawyers will keep it that way.
How does a legal bill get that high? Bonta said he had attorneys “working around the clock to be responsive” starting in the “late summer or early fall of 2024.” He said he provided documents to the government from “multiple devices, multiple computers and laptops; there’s a lot of places where information is stored, and every one of us has a very significant data footprint.”
Sounds like this fell under the category of “responding to letters of inquiry or subpoenas” on the law firm’s list of services. Bonta told Zavala he is “1,000% not a target” of the investigation.
Everything’s fine.
The Fair Political Practices Commission, which regulates and enforces laws on campaign finance in California, confirmed to Zavala that it received a complaint over Bonta’s use of campaign funds to pay these legal bills and would decide within 14 days whether to open an investigation. Don’t hold your breath. Even if it’s an illegal use of campaign funds, what are they supposed to do, refer the case to the attorney general?
So everything’s fine, but Bonta would like you to know that he has given away the $155,100 in campaign contributions from the Duongs and their associates “out of an abundance of caution.”
Politico Playbook reported that after it raised questions about certain contributions, Bonta returned or donated: $80,000 from attorneys representing SoCal Edison that he accepted just before announcing that there would be no criminal charges against the company for starting a wildfire in 2018; $4,000 he accepted from lawyers who represented ride-share companies challenging a California labor law; and $16,200 he accepted from the Bicycle Casino while his office was investigating it.
It’s fine to accept the money and then give it up later if anybody raises massive ethical questions. Everything’s fine.
Maybe you remember that time when L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s office had L.A. County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl on the ropes over lucrative and questionable Metro contracts she approved for a friend’s nonprofit organization. On September 14, 2022, the sheriff’s office executed search warrants at Metro headquarters, Kuehl’s residence and office, and other locations.
Less than a week later, Bonta ordered the sheriff’s department to “cease any investigative activities” related to the case and to “transmit all evidence, investigative reports, and information in the LASD’s possession related to the LASD investigation to the DOJ,” that is, to the California Department of Justice. In other words, to Bonta’s office.
Guess what happened.
On August 7, 2024, Bonta announced that he would not pursue criminal charges against Kuehl or her friend, or anyone who had tipped them off with advance warning of the search warrants.
This is absolutely not obstruction of justice or obstruction of a criminal investigation or racketeering. Everything’s fine.
And certainly there was nothing illegal about Bonta using “behested payments” to raise money for his wife Mia’s “Literacy Lab” nonprofit when he was in the Assembly, including $3,500 from Pacific Gas & Electric in 2015 and $6,500 in 2016. In California, it’s legal for elected officials to call people or entities with business before the state and ask them to make unlimited donations, even if those donations go to nonprofits that pay a generous salary to an immediate family member. It’s absolutely not extortion and it’s certainly not racketeering.
And there’s nothing suspicious at all in a behested payment report from May 2, 2024, disclosing that Bonta asked “Arnold Ventures LLC/Action Now, Inc.” in Houston to give $500,000 to Farella Braun + Martell LLP in San Francisco, a law firm that happens to have a “white collar criminal defense” practice. The report described the “governmental” purpose of the $500,000 payment as, “Assist in investigations subject to the direction and control of office attorneys.”
What was that? Was it related to the investigation of Sheng Thao and the Duongs, the subject of FBI raids the following month?
It was probably something else.
It’s absolutely not racketeering. In California, it’s politics.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley