LOS ANGELES (CN) — A former Los Angeles deputy mayor lost his bid to exclude "salacious" details of Las Vegas trips that were used to bribe a convicted local politician from his upcoming racketeering trial.
Raymond Chan is the last remaining defendant in a sprawling LA City Hall corruption scandal centered around José Huizar, a former City Council member who last month was sentenced to 13 years in prison for running a criminal enterprise that solicited massive bribes and other favors from real-estate developers in exchange for moving their projects through the city's approval process.
Federal prosecutors have charged Chan, 67, with racketeering conspiracy and aiding and abetting Huizar's bribery scheme by acting as a go-between the councilman and deep-pocketed Chinese developers during a building boom in downtown LA. Chan first went on trial a year ago, but the case ended in a mistrial after his lawyer fell seriously ill and couldn't return to the courtroom.
His new trial is scheduled to start on March 12.
U.S. District Judge John Walter on Friday denied the request by Chan's new lawyers to prevent jurors from hearing about what they said were the salacious details of the numerous, all-expenses-paid gambling and partying trips that Chinese billionaire Wei Huang, the chairman of Shen Zhen New World, took Huizar on from 2013 through 2017.
Those details, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in gambling chips Huang gave to Huizar, in addition to providing him with luxury suites, expensive meals, wines and prostitutes, would be prejudicial to Chan, his lawyers said, because he didn't go on those trips with Huang and Huizar,
"What salacious details?" the judge asked. "What is prejudicial about a luxury suite at Caesar's?"
The details of those Las Vegas trips, Walter said, including that Huizar was always first served at dinner and got the first pick of the prostitutes Huang provided, were relevant to the prosecution's case against Chan because they were the financial benefit Huizar received as part of the bribery scheme Chan is charged with enabling.
"Isn't that important for the jury to understand?" the judge asked. "Huizar wouldn't have been selling his office for a stay in Motel 6 and dinner at Jack in the Box."
Walter, however, cautioned the government to truncate the lengthy testimony about the Las Vegas trips, in part provided by Huizar's former special assistant, that was part of the trial of the U.S.-based subsidiary of Huang's company in 2022.
The judge also denied the defense's bid to exclude evidence at trial of Huizar's bribery schemes in which Chan wasn't personally involved.
"It would be cumulative," Michael Freedman, one of Chan's attorneys argued. "In the other schemes, Mr. Chan was just doing his day-to-day job."
Freedman pointed out that the two developers who have been tried and convicted in the corruption scandal were given separate trials precisely so that they wouldn't be unfairly tainted by other aspects of Huizar's criminal enterprise that had nothing to do with them.
Walter rejected this argument because unlike those developers, Chan is charged with racketeering conspiracy, and the other parts of the criminal enterprise were part of the overall conspiracy.
Chan was the general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety before being appointed deputy mayor of economic development in 2016. He's accused of facilitating Huizar's bribery scheme with Shen Zhen New World, which was found guilty at trial in 2022 of paying more than $1 million in bribes to Huizar.
He's also accused of acting as Huizar's go-between for Shenzhen Hazens' domestic subsidiary Jia Yuan USA, which paid a $1 million fine as part of nonprosecution agreement with the Justice Department in 2019.
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