Carona Should Resign? Absolutely not. There is no telling which clown would takeover from the cesspool that contains Carona’s upper management. Besides, as an investigative journalist, I’d mourn the loss of a character like Mike Carona sitting atop the sheriff’s department. Sure, he’s dirty. Yes, yes, he routinely tries to use the powers of his office to frighten me. But Carona’s a guaranteed scandal maker. Last year, I dubbed him “Calamity Mike” after we obtained an audio recording of him having sex with a department secretary while his temperamental wife (indicted too, can you believe?) and sweet son (too young to be committing felonies yet–we hope) sat feet away in another vehicle. Classy. I’ve been around long enough to know two things: Carona’s not 100 percent bad and he very well may someday enter a local fine dining establishment with his chest out and his nose up—winking, of course, at chicks who still dig his soiled uniform. Carona and wife Deborah—not Debra, his longtime mistress (indicted too, can you believe?)—hit the media circuit yesterday. It must have been painful, considering the depths of the sheriff’s hatred of the press. He told Christine Hanley at the Los Angeles Times, “I’m staying because I love the job and I do a good job.” Sure, Mikey. Looks fun. The wife—how can she reign superior over her tea group now?—played whiny victim by casting FBI and IRS agents as villains. Please, women. We should thank the Feds who worked on this case. Without you folks, Orange County would be lawless for the power players who run the place. Final thought until tomorrow: The idea of ex-Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl—a slimy, hillbilly character straight from central casting who has already pleaded guilty in the bribery scheme—wearing a wire while OC’s top cop allegedly tries to convince him to lie to a federal grand jury is priceless. I imagine the conversation going like this:
Haidl: (deeply inhales cigarette smoke and before exhaling) Fuck.
Sheriff: We're fucked.
Haidl: (gulps a shot of whiskey) Fuck.
Sheriff: Fuckin' Moxley.
Haidl (farts) Fuck.
Sheriff: Your sister's looking hot.
— R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
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.