Watching Harry Sidhu plead guilty… updated with VIDEO!

As King Solomon wrote in the Book of Ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything under the sun – a time to be born, a time to die, a time to laugh, a time to weep, AND A TIME FOR SCHADENFREUDE. The latter time is in a couple of hours, at the Ronald Reagan Courthouse, where disgraced Mayor Harry Sidhu is expected to officially plead guilty. (This was supposed to be a “sentencing,” but that seems to have changed.)

And we’ll be there, with bells and whistles, we’ll be there early. We haven’t seen the guy since the last meeting he ran April 26, 2022, in his ill-tempered and dictatorial way, before the FBI hammer fell on him in mid-May. We’ll be there early, we want to get a good seat and look him in the eye. Will he still sport a superior-looking smirk?

It’ll be easy to enjoy this because he was always smug, arrogant and cruel at all times. As I’ve written before, I think he retained a certain caste system in his head when he came from India, wherein if he loyally serves the interests of a small class of Better Men (like Ament, Flint, Disney, Arte Moreno) he’s in a privileged position to look down on the vast majority of us peons.

Remember the disdain with which he treated the rent-jacked seniors of Rancho La Paz, and their leader Lupe Ramirez whom he called “that nasty old woman?” Remember how he silenced the two-member Latino minority on Council, Jose Moreno and Denise Barnes, in any way he could?

(Never forget though that he couldn’t have done anything he did without the connivance of Jordan Brandman, Steve Faessel, Lucille Kring and Trevor O’Neil.)

[from “Better Anaheim“]

Yes, we’re going downtown to watch Harry Sidhu plead guilty, and I’ll report on it afterwards. Why is the sentencing not happening today? Rumor has it he will be flipping on JEFF FLINT, and equally loathsome and destructive character. Last we heard he was refusing to give up his personal e-mail and personal phone – I don’t think he could have kept up THAT obstruction if he wants a good deal. And remember how he’s paying for his legal defense – $300k so far! – with leftover CAMPAIGN MONEY, using a “Sidhu for Mayor 2030” committee.

Well, we’ll see, I gotta run now! I’ll be back…

Update 3pm

Jason (from Save Anaheim) and I got there an hour early and staked out the two front entrances; yet he somehow snuck past us and was in the courtroom when we returned. Is there a helicopter pad atop the Reagan Building? Then on the way out I tried to get in the same elevator car as him – there was plenty of room, just him, his two lawyers, and a marshal, but the marshal pushed me out and said “Take the next car.” They do that? If a defendant wants to have anybody kept away from them?

Harry looked old and moved like a cardboard cutout; his hair is trimmed and gray. I didn’t see him give his death-rictus grimace, although Jason, from a different vantage point, says he did. He plead guilty to all charges as expected, charges we’ve already heard from the plea agreement. The maximum sentence for all those charges could be 50 years and a million dollars.

But there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know going on behind the scenes – that plea agreement from last month was 25 pages, but there was also a “sealed 15-page addendum” added to that – maybe detailing his future co-operation?

Near the end of the ordeal, Harry was forced to describe in his own words the crimes he was pleading guilty to. He was so ready to do that, he almost did it at the beginning of the hearing! But this is what he said: “I destroyed e-mails from my personal account to Todd Ament; I registered my helicopter in Arizona to avoid sales tax; I falsely signed FAA documents; and I did lie to the FBI.”

Just like Al Capone, they never get you for the REALLY fucked up things you did.

Sentencing won’t be till June 14 of NEXT YEAR. Nine months.

Harry and his two lawyers gave like a ten-second “press conference” out front and took off quickly, ignoring Chip Yost of KTLA’s question, “Anything you want to say to the citizens of Anaheim who elected you and trusted you?” as well as Jason’s cries of “Was Steve Faessel at those Mock Meetings?” and “I’m so glad you’re going to prison!”

About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.