On September 22, an LA Superior Court Judge ruled the warrant which was used to search Sheila Kuehl’s home as valid.
The County Sheriff’s Department of LA made known that it had to fight to uphold the warrant’s legitimacy in court using legal representation, which was provided by Werksman Jackson & Quinn LLP.
The LASD official account posted the approved warrant’s copy on social media, stating:
“SEARCH WARRANT RULED VALID! @LASDHQ thanks Alan Jackson and his remarkable team from Werksman Jackson & Quinn LLP for representing us at today’s court proceeding regarding the search warrant served by our Public Corruption Unit last week. This victory is validation for the Department’s actions and confirms our independent investigatory powers under the state Constitution in uncovering alleged public corruption.”
The search warrant performed in a “public corruption case” which was linked to Supervisor Kuehl as well as Patricia “Patti” Giggans, Civilian Oversight Commissioner of LA County. The case claims possible corruption regarding contracts given to the NPO Peace Over Violence.
Both defendants’ homes underwent searches on September 14, and so was the County Hall of Administration, as well as the headquarters of the Peace over Violence organization and the LA Metro offices.
Soon after the court made this decision, Keuhl published a multi-post message on Twitter addressing not just her home’s search, but also allegations regarding a possible crime having been committed when she received early notice of the search from someone working at LA Times.
“I want to cut through the BS coming from MAGA media,” Kuehl stated in the opening tweet. “I first heard of the possibility of this bogus search warrant from The LA Times nearly a week before Sheriff’s deputies arrived at my door.”
Kuehl proceeded to accuse the LA Sheriff’s Department of leaking info regarding the search to the publications in advance of the execution of the warrant. The Supervisor then claimed the investigators lacked the legal right to go through messages on her country-distributed phone as well as her personal mobile device.
“I got some satisfaction from the fact that even though the Sheriff and his team were reviewing hundreds of texts that came to my personal phone after the raid, nearly all of them expressed some fairly strong, rude, and negative opinions about the Sheriff,” Kuehl said when concluding her Twitter statement. “I hope he enjoyed them!”
The DOJ announced they were taking over the investigation, as well as investigating concerns from the Sheriff that Kuehl is guilty of a crime.
AG Rob Bonta said the Sheriff’s Department was requested to surrender all evidence to the Department of Justice, as well as stop the investigation on September 21.