He dines with judges, travels on vacation with congressmen, and is known as an expensive red-wine connoisseur who can lecture on the intricacies of corporate tax policy and obscure voting regulations.
But who knew Michael J. Schroeder is also, gasp, a Lady Gaga fan?
I wouldn't have believed it myself if Christopher Victorio, the Weekly's trusty photographer, hadn't recorded the absolute, undeniable proof last night at Lady Gaga's Honda Center concert in Anaheim (click here for our review, by the way). It is a photo you may never forget.
Are you seated?
This is NOT an April Fools' Day joke. . . .
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Is your jaw ready to hit the floor?
Yes, the man in that picture is the former chairman of the stodgy California Republican Party.
Indeed, Schroeder–a wealthy Santa Ana chiropractic-insurance-company king and conservative activist who is also known as “Vader” and “Lex Luthor” for the way he deftly uses the forces of darkness to crush political enemies–apparently has a boa in his closet.
And it's big, white and fluffy.
The woman in the photograph who is holding the $5 million Chanel bag?
That is Mike's wife, Susan Kang Schroeder, chief of staff to Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas and, if Todd Spitzer's worries are right, his future opponent for the county's top prosecutor spot when Rackauckas retires.
Look at the smile on Susan's face. She doesn't seem the least bit concerned that Debby Bodkin, a citizen concerned with OC corruption, this week demanded that Rackauckas remove Schroeder from any role in the pending prosecution of the Irvine 11, a group of Muslim students charged by the DA's office with disrupting a UC Irvine speech by Israel's U.S. ambassador. According to Bodkin, Susan Schroeder is not just a corrupting influence, but is anti-Semitic.
I don't think Mike, who is the DA's closest personal adviser, is worried about anything either. You should have seen the euphoric glee on his face when Lady Gaga sang “Monster.” Some thought he was voguing during the song while Susan performed the robot.
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.
