It’s not surprising that Larry Agran would want to avoid answering questions under oath about how his Democrat council majority in Irvine spent more than $200 million without building a single, major feature at the proposed Orange County Great Park.
But it is fascinating that Agran, who has a California law license and was a 1992 presidential candidate, thinks he can ignore a lawfully issued subpoena that compelled his presence Wednesday for a deposition in the city’s ongoing investigation into Great Park shenanigans.
The man who voters booted out of office in November failed to show up at the offices of Anthony R. Taylor, the Aleshire & Wynder attorney who is conducting the probe.
In response, city officials this afternoon scheduled a special session of the council for Monday when they will vote on whether to seek an Orange County Superior Court order forcing Agran’s cooperation.
Taylor, a recent California Lawyer Attorney of the Year honoree and a man who helped locate missing funds in the City of Bell scandal, has already discovered serious mismanagement and questionable spending when Agran’s political machine ran the Great Park operation for a decade.
The city’s special counsel reported today how Agran has worked for months to evade a deposition, including filing 10 pages of objections and demanding that taxpayers pay all of his legal bills.
Agran, a notoriously brazen liar about Great Park affairs, claims he was shocked–shocked!–that Taylor would want to interview him and that he needs weeks or months to prepare to discuss his management of the project.
Taylor says Irvine officials should not only force the deposition but also make the ex-councilman pay for lamely skipping out on the scheduled meeting.
“The continued lack of cooperation by Mr. Agran will create further expenses for the City, in addition to delaying the completion of the audit,” he advised the council today.
Agran’s alliance with Beth Krom and Sukhee Kang diverted more than $174,000 per month in park funds to three political operatives–George Urch, Chris Townsend and Arnold Forde–allegedly performing “public relations” for a government park that still hasn’t been built–and then shrugged their collective shoulders about why there was no money left for the noble endeavor.
Thanks in large part to Agran’s slimy operation, Republicans now control the council with a 4-1 majority.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.