No, this is NOT a reference to Todd Priest or any member of his Anonymous Choir. The reference will, I PROMISE YOU, make sense to you by the time you get to the end of the final paragraph — assuming that you’re up on your classic Stephen King.
[1] The Pinch-Liar Steps Up to the Plate
Matt Cunningham seemed sort of down when he last wrote about Doug Pettibone, late of the race for Anaheim City Council. He apparently realized that a campaign strategy designed to tie Tom Tait to spurious charges about Pettibone would not likely work once Pettibone said, in essence “you know, I’ve had it with you guys and there are two good City Council candidates left to support without me, so I’m out of here.”
When an independent contractor like Cunningham flails, a leader like Curt Pringle must turn to a bona fide real employee, executive level if possible. I don’t know whether the widespread understanding that “Anaheim Insider” (the #2 poster on the Cunningblog) is really Pringle’s VP/henchman Todd Priest, but the desperation with which he tries to forward the ball tonight — bostered by five different anonymous commenters — suggested that the Cunningblog needed to deploy someone who wasn’t queasy. So I’m calling “Anaheim Insider” by what seems to be his real name, Todd Priest. If Priest denies it, maybe some executive assistant at Pringle & Associates will finally snap and write us, turning on him. (Just kidding — that won’t happen, but I may have just gotten a bunch of clerical staff a bonus — just to make sure.)
The entire story, entitled “The Pettibone Withdrawal and Tait’s Judgment,” is predicated on a primary Big Lie: that Doug Pettibone pled guilty of assault against his ex-wife.
He didn’t. He has never said that he did; he never “admitted it.” He has admitted to acting in ways that he wished that he hadn’t and that he found to be personally embarrassing — but there is a long distance between that and illegality.
Pettibine admitted to having verbal altercations with his then-wife about the custody of their then-infant son. That’s it. Priest starts with the Big Lie — and then he does what I suspect Cunningham wasn’t willing to do: stake all of his chips on a second lie: that, prior to this afternoon, the supposed case record of the charges against Pettibone and their disposition has been available on the web for months for all to see.
No, it hasn’t — and enough people have tried looking for them prior to yesterday afternoon at about 1:30 p.m. that this isn’t even hard to nail down. You’d have to be pretty desperate, in fact, to make an assertion that documents that had been marked for destruction in 2010 — documents that not only Pettibone himself but other journalists and investigators could not find — were always readily available. (Journalists don’t like becoming the story — but the accusation here is that they were completely incompetent for about a day and maybe more once this story broke — and they aren’t incompetent. I expect that they will readily defend their own honor.)
Priest and his choir of anonymous commenters are desperate — which is why, in an attempt to smear Tait, they’re literally going to try to rewrite history. Because they have been deleting comments that they don’t like, I’m using much more of their story than I normally would — because it’s impossible to discuss their charges on their own page and impossible to discuss them properly without their text. Here’s how the scam works.
[2] Pettibone’s Choice
Here’s what Priest has to say about Doug Pettibone yesterday, about a full day AFTER he withdrew from the race to neutralize the attacks that the Pringle Ring obviously had planned. Most of the quotes from the Cunningblog below are in poisonous olive green, but the big lies are in shocking pink.
Time for a reality check.
– Doug Pettibone was charged with four misdemeanor counts of battery, battery against a spouse, assault, and harassment in June 1998. Pettibone has not disputed this.
Doug Pettibone pled guilty to assault. He also pled guilty to “excessive noise.” Again, Pettibone has not disputed this. What he said in a comment on this blog is “the ‘assault’ case you claim I plead guilty to was actually dismissed by the district attorney “in the interests of justice.” After speaking with criminal defense lawyers, what this really means is the charge was subsequently dismissed in the interest of justice after successful completion of the sentence, paying the fees and the terms and conditions of a probationary period. Anyone can do that if the penal code permits it for that offense, complete the terms, have a minimal record, did not have any issues on probation and until their court date behaved themselves.
But Pettibone did commit an act that resulted in his being charged with assault, and to which he pled guilty.
Nope. There were no guilty pleas, as lawyers use the term. The facts raised were never assessed for whether they would suffice to prove legal guilt; the District Attorney never even tried to do so.
What happened is that after the initial charges were thrown out — not by a jury, which is your second clue that there is something VERY WRONG with that supposed court report sheet (we’ll get to the first one later) but by the DA himself — the lesser charges remained. The DA had not decided to go ahead with them; it’s not clear that he could have won such a case and attempting one over a charge such as “making a loud and unpleasant noise” — seriously, that’s one of the misdemeanor counts — would have been an awful waste of legal resources towards what in any case would be a questionable end.
And there was something else at play: Pettibone was contrite. He wasn’t contrite because he had committed a crime; he was contrite because he had acted in a way that he hated and wanted to change. He was not only dealing with the DA in this context, but he was dealing with the Family Court, which has handling the custody dispute. The Family Court wanted him to get 52 sessions of counseling, on per week. He was fine with that. That’s as much or more as the DA would have wanted even if Pettibone had pled guilty. And so they reached an agreement: Pettibone would get some counseling, which he did feel that he needed — and when that was done the charges would be dismissed.
All of this happened without a guilty plea. Pettibone essentially had to do the equivalent of offer a guilty plea that would only come into being if he failed to finish the Counseling sessions. They were not a “sentence”; they were an order of the Family Court, not any criminal prosecution. His promise to accept a guilty verdict if he didn’t finish his counseling was like putting up a bond; when he finished those sessions, that promise went away. For legal purposes, it had never existed one he satisfied the order of the non-Criminal Family Court.
Why is this distinction — and yeah, I do know that is is very technical — important? It’s because, unlike with a REAL guilty plea, there’s no basis to believe that the DA ever had, or ever even thought he had, the prospect of a winning case. The DA didn’t even have to examine the facts to see if he did have one. When you have someone accused of a misdemeanor, and that person is contrite and wants to do what the DA would want him to do anyway, the DA doesn’t need a guilty plea. And there wasn’t one.
Now what really gets Priest’s goat — because it totally screwed up the plan! — is this:
Read Doug Pettibone’s withdrawal statement. He provides no explanation, detail or meaningful information of why he was charged with the above offenses. He only says:
Please allow me to be frank. I have done some things and said something involved in that custody dispute which I am not proud of but which did occur and which I take full responsibility for.
That’s it. Far from being “frank,” Pettibone refuses to say what happened or what he did.
There’s some truth here — but it’s not a truth that Priest is going to like.
Pettibone is now, 16 years later, on good terms with his ex-wife — who has been an eager supporter of his campaign. Neither of them wants to revisit what may well be the darkest period of their lives. They are united in raising what sounds like an excellent son, a minor who also doesn’t need this sort of grief. Pettibone’s now-wife was and would remain supportive of his campaign — but she didn’t sign up to stand by him during a public flaying by people who just wanted to use him as a way to get a Mayor Tait.
So Priest is right to this extent — Pettibone didn’t explain the precise interactions, complete with necessary context, that led to charges being filed against him. Usually, neither side in a divorce and custody battle acts in ways that they would later be proud of — so part of that may simply involve his being a gentleman towards his ex-wife and again-friend. But also, as a father and as a husband, he would not want to delve into old wounds publicly if he didn’t have to.
And — he DIDN’T have to! He could instead just walk away from the race — without even hurting the chances of Tait and Vanderbilt to govern more responsibly next year! And so that’s what he did. I can’t blame him for that, can you?
And here’s where Priest is most right, at least in what he implied: Doug Pettibone probably COULD NOT fail to give a full accounting of the situation IF HE REMAINED A CANDIDATE FOR OFFICE. If he still wanted people’s votes, he’d have to stave off demands for an accounting of what happened during that time period — and it would be gory and bloody and embarrassing and just want Todd Priest wanted. A full confession and self-flagellation would be the price demanded of him to remain viable — and, unfair as that is, it still probably wouldn’t work!
Aside from “Anaheim Priestsider” himself, some anonymous jerks over at Liberal OC have been asking why, if he hadn’t pled guilty, he still quit the race. Go back and read the last paragraph, geniuses! THAT’S WHY! As a candidate, he would have to violate his ethical obligations to his ex-wife as a gentleman and a friend, and his moral obligations to his wife and son as a husband and a father. And he said “no.” He did not have to, he would not do so, and in exchange for his hewing to his own moral code he would no longer ask people to vote for him.
That’s a pretty fair trade! And, frankly, it’s what a good family man might well be expected to do. And you can see in every paragraph of Priest’s story how Pettibone’s evading this carefully planted snare is absolutely killing Priest. It’s almost funny: “What have you done to my beautiful evil plans?” And that brings us back to Priest’s target: Tom Tait.
[3] “Stop Lying About My Record”
This section gives us a sense of what the Pringle Ring was going to TRY to do to Tom Tait before Pettibone made it much, much harder.
What Did Tait Know, And Why Didn’t he Know It?
In his withdrawal statement, Pettibone claims he concealed this information from Tait. Tait told Lisa Lewis he was “unaware” of the charges stemming from a domestic violence incident.
There are two possibilities.
1. Tait knew, and chose to hide it from the voters. It is entirely possible, as we now see from Pettibone’s second response, that he believed the record would not show this. Pettibone told Tait the record was expunged and no one would ever find out. Tait went along with the cover up.
2. Tait didn’t know, in which case he didn’t do his homework and his judgment is called into question. How many times has he pontificated at Council meetings how closely he has studied the issues? And yet, he recruited Doug Pettibone and asked voters to elect him to the City Council without vetting him and checking his background? The sole rationale for Pettibone’s candidacy was that he’s endorsed by Tait.
The correct answer is “2.” And Tait — who, knowing the unprincipled viciousness of his opponents not himself being an idiot, did vet Pettibone — had three levels of reasons why he didn’t know about these events despite having done his homework:
- Pettibone never told Tait about these events.
- Pettibone thought that he didn’t HAVE to tell Tait about these events because they were entirely personal and did not involve any criminal acts.
- Pettibone, after having failed to be able to bring up his own record — SOMETHING THAT HE DOES KNOW HOW TO DO, FOR GOD’S SAKE — had every reason to believe that the record was not available to the public, especially because it was supposed to have been destroyed in 2010.
In other words, he didn’t need to tell Tait about his unhappy history on substantive grounds because Tait didn’t need to know about this non-criminal behavior, and he didn’t need to tell Tait to protect him because the information was already excluded from public view.
A simple name search on the OCCourts.org website would have turned up the charges against Pettibone and his guilty pleas:
In that second row of the Case Summary, you’ll see the filing date on the left, then the Case Status (which was Closed) — and then two more columns: the “Disposition Date” and the “Destruction Date.” This case was to be disposed of — which I suspect would include its being removed from ready availability to the public — in February 2007. The record was to be DESTROYED — not available to ANYONE — on December 14, 2010 — almost 44 months ago.
Let’s say that, for whatever reason, the record wasn’t destroyed. Let’s say that a physical copy of it was in some paper archive somewhere. Could be, I imagine. But if that’s what happened — IT WOULD STILL NOT BE AVAILABLE ON THE PUBLIC ARCHIVE.
AND IT WASN’T.
The smart thing for the Pringle Ring to do, if they knew that the document was in the archive, would have been to file some formal request to have it reinstated. That would have really cooked Pettibone’s goose — if this information was accurate, which it isn’t.
Here’s the problem they had, though: IT WOULD NOT HAVE COOKED TAIT’S GOOSE, BECAUSE THEN THERE’S NO WAY HE COULD HAVE FOUND IT. And they wanted to cook Tait’s goose, not so much Pettibone’s.
The only way to cook Tait’s goose was to have the case suddenly appear in the archives — like the TARDIF grinding into existence, or Brigadoon. And, despite its clearly listed Disposition and Destruction Dates — it had to be made to look like it had been there all along. And, voila, that’s what the anonymous commenter “Anon No. 9” announced on this very website this afternoon.
(“Anon No. 9” is not quite as anonymous as he or she thinks, by the way — but we’ll leave that for another time. It’s not for lack of trying — just bad luck! We’re not going to tell you how we figured it out.)
Inserting a record that was supposed to be destroyed back into the public archive, in order to manipulate an election result, is one thing. I expect that it’s illegal, probably on multiple grounds. But there’s something much worse — and that would be forging a record to insert it into the archives. Now you’re talking about some REAL hurt!
It’s possible — I had thought probable — that depicting Pettibone as having “pled guilty” to the last two charges was simply a clerical error. That may still be true. Maybe that’s what it said, wrongly, for eight or so years prior to its destruction.
But it’s also possible — especially if we’re talking about electronic records — that it was tampered with, and that it never even said “pled guilty” until it suddenly reappeared on Thursday from Case File Limbo.
That would be VERY, VERY BAD.
Is there any reason to think that it might have been forged? I don’t know enough about the recording system to say — but if someone were making up the electronic record after the fact, it would be pretty reasonable for them to believe that Pettibone had undergone a jury trial — which is falsely presented as the disposition of the first two charges. That would explain that error. So while I’m in no position to say that this record was forged — that is a pretty huge error there — and it’s an error that would be more likely to have happened in 2014 than in 1998 or 1999, when the records showing the Presiding Judge and verdict and such would have been available — or obviously missing, meaning there was no jury.
It is incredible if this took the Tait campaign by surprise. Tait staked the full weight of his endorsement and his credibility as Mayor on Pettibone, but made no effort to find out the facts about him before urging him on the voters? Next time the Mayor claims to have arrive at a decision after digging into an issue, it will be hard to take him seriously.
That gets hot pink. On to the Conclusion.
[4] Priest’s Forces Fall Back to What They Hope are Defensible Positions
Pettibone’s Credibility
Fact: Pettibone admits to concealing that he had been arrested on multiple charges stemming from a domestic incident, and even pleaded guilty to assault. He broke the law, and then kept it from the voters while he campaigned as the endorsed candidate of Mayor Transparency. How is that a qualification for office?
In a comment on TheLiberalOC.com, Pettibone dismissed all of this as “misinformation and these half-truths.” If that is the case, then why did he drop out of the race so quickly? And if “half-truths and misinformation” in a letter sent to the Mayor caused Pettibone to fold like a lawn chair, how was he going to “stand up to the special interests” as a member of the City Council?
Sounds like it was largely prepared for a different scenario, doesn’t it? By the way, the “why did he drop out of the race?” question isn’t strictly speaking a lie — but it’s stupid enough to be one. If you skipped down here, it was answered above.
Tait’s Minions Now Attacking Lisa Lewis
All Lisa Lewis did was send a letter to Mayor Tait bringing this information about Pettibone to his attention, asking him if he knew about it, and what he was going to do about it.
NOOOOO, no, no, no, no. That’s not all she did. Now we’ve entered “they must think you’re stupid or hope you’re inattentive” territory. She repeatedly emphasized that Tait recruited Pettibone, that Pettibone was Tait’s choice, that his behavior reflected badly on Tait. Go back and read the letter. If Chumley destroys it, I’ll be happy to post my copy.
And for that, Tait minions Cynthia Ward and Greg Diamond are now going after Lisa Lewis! What Pettibone did doesn’t bother them, but it does bother them that someone brought it up. Lisa Lewis was trapped in an abusive marriage, asks about Pettibone’s trouble with the law stemming from a domestic incident, and she’s the bad guy?
I suggest that people read the questions that I asked Lewis — the most salient of which is “who gave you the information and encouraged (or helped) you to write about it?” That’s not calling her the bad guy — that’s investigative reporting. No WONDER Priest flipped out over it.
There’s more, but this is enough for one piece. Oh, except for one more thing.
Priest ends by making a big deal over why Tait has been silent about Pettibone’s actions since his withdrawal from the race. In case Priest really doesn’t get it: Tait has been silent because Pettibone withdrew from the race. What Pettibone did is no longer an issue. We’ve moved on to other issues — such as why a destroyed case record came back to life in altered form, seeking, like the buried animals in Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, to wreak havoc among the living. How did THAT happen? “Case Record Sematary” — THAT’S the story now!
…
…
[UPDATE]
This comment by David Zenger, which appears below, is too good and too important to leave out of this story’s text.
BTW, for those with a bit of basic decency or who are just a tab bit squeamish and find this whole tale pretty reprehensible, it’s important (or instructive) to consider that Pringle’s clients have literally tens of millions on the line in this election, probably more if you count Mr. Arte Moreno and/or possible stadium developers as Pringle clients which seems highly plausible.
This isn’t small-time politics as usual. A new and honest council majority will begin to ask fiscal questions about the ACC budget and debt service liability vis-a-vis the General Fund, among a host of other mismanagement issues – like who hired Charles Black to “negotiate” for the City, and who constructed the “non-binding” Moreno MOUs, and who devalued the stadium land value and who is orchestrating the continued misrepresentation of every aspect of the rancid deal; who keeps pushing the Muzeo sinkhole and the Chamber of Commerce relationships, etc. Even worse they will demand, and get honest (for once) answers.
If you as a reader don’t already appreciate how high the stakes are in this election — the extent of the measures that the Pringle Ring would contemplate to elect Murray, Eastman, Kring (and some people even think Galloway as well) in order to keep the tap of flowing money wide open to the “Masters of the City” — then we haven’t yet been adequately able to convey it to you. We’ll keep writing — but you need to keep reading and keep asking questions. This is not just another election in just another city.
I would like to verify if the Kleptocracy used the Lorri Galloway to move the ball forward AFTER the Lisa Lewis creature had made sure to notify Tait in writing of the horror! And Baby Jesus told Galloway to forward the incriminating information to Dan Chomolungma for initial dissemination so the Kleptos could claim he “broke” a real story and then they might pile on while not having their fingerprints on it (at least not too many).
BTW, for those with a bit of basic decency or who are just a tab bit squeamish and find this whole tale pretty reprehensible, it’s important (or instructive) to consider that Pringle’s clients have literally tens of millions on the line in this election, probably more if you count Mr. Arte Moreno and/or possible stadium developers as Pringle clients which seems highly plausible.
This isn’t small-time politics as usual. A new and honest council majority will begin to ask fiscal questions about the ACC budget and debt service liability vis-a-vis the General Fund, among a host of other mismanagement issues – like who hired Charles Black to “negotiate” for the City, and who constructed the “non-binding” Moreno MOUs, and who devalued the stadium land value and who is orchestrating the continued misrepresentation of every aspect of the rancid deal; who keeps pushing the Muzeo sinkhole and the Chamber of Commerce relationships, etc. Even worse they will demand, and get honest (for once) answers.
Ok, maybe my searching skills are lacking, but….
It’s two days since Pettibone’s withdrawal, and I see nothing about it in the Register, OC Weekly, or VoiceofOC.
Why is that?
I’d love to know as well.
Because it’s news!
The Register will be covering it in next week’s Anaheim Bulletin, due out on Thursday.
Adam’s been busy covering the CATER trial on the Convention Center bonds, among other things.
As for the Weekly — I don’t know, but my guess is that this “record returning from the Case Record Sematary” thing might pique Moxley’s interest sooner or later.
A) I can point to ONE BILLION DOLLARS in crony capitalist funding that leads back to Curt’s clients. Tens of millions is nothing.
B) in addition to funding, an honest Council needs to look at Measure C, and how administrative clean-up presented to the Charter Review committee had NO BEARING on the strike-thru version of the Charter that was approved by voters in June. Among changes we eliminated the need for fidelity bonds for senior staff, this is a BIG BIG BIG DEAL because if there is malfeasance or fraud, and fidelity bonds pay out, it is a very different crime than simply ripping off taxpayers. You think we aren’t being set up? They also removed any requirement to present warrants or claims in writing prior to payoff. We already watched them hand over half of all sales tax from Gardenwalk shopping center based on a bogus THREAT of potential claim (not even a real claim) at least that was in writing (another Pringle client) now one need not even go that far. So what exactly IS the process today for presenting a warrant or a claim? Do you simply mention it in passing during a cocktail party fundraiser for the Kleptocrats? Oh by the way my lawyer says I should sue you for some frivolous bit of marshmallow fluff of a legal premise, would you prefer to settle? Oh…that only works if your claim is complete horseshit and you are their friend. If you have an ACTUAL case that you can prove in court the Council gives Michael Houston an open checkbook and sends him off to crush you at all costs, and hey let’s threaten to financially destroy your family while we are at it, since you have the audacity to demand we follow the law. Bitter? ya think?
and…
C) you remember the last time they tried to smack the mayor around? They blamed him for the hate speech of Fitzgerald, to deflect attention from their own dastardly deeds stripping the Mayor of his agendizing power. It didn’t end well.
Or, as Richard just pointed out to me, once upon a time, the (remaining) Japanese flew back to their aircraft carriers thinking they had whooped butt on Pearl Harbor…sometimes it does not pay to piss off the enemy. Based on basic reaction to this issue, I don’t see this being a positive outcome for the Kleptocracy. They dragged a man’s ex wife and teenaged son into the mix, bringing up the darkest period of the lives of people who did NOT sign up for the same campaign that Doug and Claire did. Not cool.
…and by the way, I am not a “Tait minion.” Ask around about what happens if I am ordered to do something. Yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark.
Me neither. I’m a Truth minion.