All hail Melahat Rafiei, Orange County’s misunderstood savior, that superhuman font of love and caring, that tireless champion of women and people of color, without whom they surely would not have a voice. Taking on all our sins like the Dark Knight or the Christ himself, she single-handedly saved Anaheim from its domination by the dark forces of greed and evil, risking her life, liberty and reputation in this selfless quest. And for this, some want to PUNISH her? Shame! At long last, sir, how can you look yourself in the mirror?

No, I’m sorry. I can’t do it. I can’t write an apologia for Melahat the way the Liberal OC’s Dan Chmielewski can.

Okay. Let me try one more time.

No. I just can’t do it. I’m sorry.

I’ve known this woman for decades, in Democrat circles, and mostly we haven’t got along. Not the kind of person I like, and it seems to be mutual. Still I haven’t been rooting for her to go to prison a long time, partly cuz I feel sorry for her son who seems like a nice kid.

BUT I just can’t sit here while she and her tool Dan (and whatever other foolish tools she has) try to whitewash and rehabilitate her reputation, with the obvious goal of freeing her up for future rampages. This revisionist propaganda consists of two myths (aside from just how goddamn wonderful she is personally) –

1. She really never did ANYTHING wrong; and
2. She was nearly single-handedly responsible for bringing down the “Anaheim Cabal,” whatever that is.

Let’s get comfortable and, one at a time, take a riding mower to those two contentions.

1. Pure as the driven snow?

Dan concludes his benediction on his good friend thusly: “As for the charge’s (sic) Melehat (sic) has admitted to, it was a mistake in judgment to mix her political work and her cannabis consulting work.  I’m hoping the public benefit of her efforts to expose the Cabal outweighs all other factors.”

Hello? That’s the problem? She exercised bad “judgment” mixing her perfectly legit political work and her perfectly legit cannabis consulting work? Wore two hats at the same time, neglecting to change them? *Ahem.* Melahat attempted to BRIBE two Irvine politicians (Melissa Fox and Jeff Lalloway) and confessed to that – was that her political work? She ripped off hundreds of thousands from her cannabis clients, saying she needed the money for bribes but then pocketing it – was that her cannabis work?

And this was the mere iceberg-tip of Melahat’s interesting work – from fixing the Santa Ana potshop lottery with her late pal Frank Barbaro to making a corrupt mess of the OCPA with her buddies Probolsky and Farrah. Yeah, she wasn’t charged or convicted for those things, but as FBI Agent Adkins wrote in footnotes to his Criminal Complaint against Todd Ament (bottom of p. 6-7):

“The FBI has been investigating Rafiei since approximately 2018 for violations of federal criminal law to include 18 U.S.C. § 666 (theft or bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds), among others. In July 2019, I sought court authorization to intercept electronic and wire communications over Rafiei’s phone … She subsequently agreed to cooperate with the FBI in this investigation…

“Based on my interactions with Rafiei, and the interactions of other agents with her, particularly FBI SA Joseph Nieblas, I believe she has lacked candor at times during her assistance in this investigation. For example, I believe she lied to FBI Special Agents during her interview on October 28, 2019. I also believe she has omitted material facts to investigators throughout her cooperation with the FBI, including additional instances where she has offered to pay bribes to elected public officials.

“However, the FBI has relied on information provided by Rafiei in instances where such information has been deemed credible by way of corroboration… Based on the government’s interaction with Rafiei and her counsel, I believe her motive for cooperating in this investigation was to receive leniency for the federal criminal violation she was originally arrested for, as well as other possible criminal conduct...”

But what does Adkins know? He’s just a G-Man. The goody two-shoes has probably been let go by now, what with Kash Patel running the FBI, Pam Bondi leading the DOJ, and their new focus on deportations, crushing dissent and taking political revenge. (I heard secondhand from one of these agents that they’d never be able to do this “Melahat/Cabal” investigation in the new climate.) And apparently the new sheriffs are taking a kinder view of Melahat for whatever reason.

But that doesn’t mean that you and I, who will be swimming in the same water as her, should FORGET WHAT SHE DID, AND CONFESSED TO.

2. The Cabal Crusher?

Over and over, Chmielewski claims that Melahat “brought down the ANAHEIM CABAL,” and makes it sound like she did it all by herself, and because she wanted to, not under duress. And somehow at “great risk” to herself, LOL. We’ll dispense with all that shortly. But mostly, I’d like to some day hear what Dan thinks the Anaheim “cabal” was (or is), and what was (or is) objectionable about it. Dude, DAN WAS PART OF IT! Or at least one of their most loyal spokesmen for a decade.

Let me try to make plain how WEIRD it is to hear Dan celebrate Melahat “bringing down the Anaheim Cabal.”

1. The most concrete result of the Melahat/Cabal investigations was putting a stop to the corrupt Angel Stadium Heist.

2. This was something the Cabal had been trying to achieve for at least a decade – for reasons still unexplained! – to unload the Stadium, Anaheim’s biggest public property, as cheaply as possible to team owner Arte Moreno.

3. The blogosphere’s biggest cheerleader for this Heist (besides the mercenary Cunningham) was Dan. And now he hops up and down bragging that his friend Melahat (also a Cabal member) helped destroy this dream project of theirs.

Way back in 2013, when the Cabal Council wanted to lease the Stadium property to Arte for $1 a year for 65 years to develop and profit off of as he saw fit ( true story!) the entire City Council was on board EXCEPT for sensible Mayor Tom Tait. The fiercest Cabal attack dog on Council was Jordan Brandman (Dan’s best friend AND a Melahat client) and in September Jordan called an “emergency” meeting with the sole purpose of shutting up Tait (stripping his agendizing ability so he couldn’t talk about the Stadium.)

Dan made his blog Cabal Central, then and always, singing the praises of the Stadium Heist, justifying every dirty thing Jordan did back then, endlessly demonizing Tait and even giving column space to Cabal Republican Kris Murray. He would claim us critics of the giveaway just didn’t understand “The Business of Baseball” – it became a running joke. Same thing in the Sidhu years when the Cabal tried AGAIN to give it away for pennies on the dollar – Dan, channeling Jordan and Melahat, was the Cabal’s biggest cheerleader. But now he purports to cheer Melahat dashing that dream – color us puzzled!

Anyway, DID Melahat “bring down the Cabal?” Under duress, she helped bust Todd for things that had nothing to do with Anaheim governance – the illegal shuffling around of big sums of Chamber of Commerce money to help buy Todd a fancy cabin in Big Bear, which he still has. And this in turn allowed the FBI to pressure Todd to help catch Mayor Sidhu doing crooked things with the Stadium deal.

But is the “Cabal” even “brought down?” Anaheim is still a company town that makes its most important decisions in secret, just a little more carefully. The same complicit city staff are still in place, and the staff that stood up to the Cabal (like Chris Zapata and Cristina Talley) were and remain fired. And the complicit councilmembers prance around now as lobbyists.

The little bit that Melahat did do to “bring down the Cabal” was NOT voluntary, and what is this “RISK” she took? To her reputation? She was faced with a choice of going to prison for bribery and theft, versus wearing a wire for the Feds, sounds like she did what was BEST for her reputation. Which she’s now spinning as heroism. Physical danger? What, was the tubby Todd or the puny pockmarked Jeff Flint gonna track her down wherever her bugged phone was and strangle her? She would have body-slammed them, just saying.

I’LL tell you who “brought down the Cabal,” as far as it is “brought down,” and defeated the Stadium Heist – it was this blog and friends of ours – especially the People’s Homeless Task Force whose Brown Act Suit got the Feds’ attention, and Mike and Jeanine Robbins who were importuning the FBI regularly for years. At far greater risk than Melahat, and at our own expense.

This blog? A favorite resource for the Feds, both in this case and after the Jan. 6 Insurrection.

JUST.

SAYING.

3. Judge Aenlle-Rocha Gets Letters!

Dan writes, regarding the campaign of sympathetic letters to the Judge which he quite obviously orchestrated:

“Rafiei received more than 40 letters of support from friends and colleagues in support of a just and light sentence.  The sentencing is still up to the judge; I can’t be objective here as I wrote one of those letters.  As I told her over the past few years, when you go through something like this, you learn who your friends are.  And she has.”

Oh, HAS she! We’ve uploaded those letters here so you can see ’em, there’s not really over 40 – there are over 40 pages, but only 28 letters. (Why does Dan have to lie, like, all the time?) We see letters from Dan of course, a lot of family, a couple of hinky labor leaders like John Hannah. We get a letter from kindred spirit Danny Fierro (left) the Disney-paid dirty trickster and former consultant for Brandman, Zahra, and Mitch Caldwell. We see someone writing on letterhead of the late Frank Barbaro (Melahat’s Santa Ana lottery co-conspirator), and interestingly we see a letter from a guy called Lucifer.

But what’s more interesting is who DID NOT write letters.

1. Hardly any politicians, which is strange for someone who worked with and for so many. Only two politicians – the retired Irvine politician and former mayor Beth Krom* and the Anaheim school board guy (& Brandman familiar) DR Heywood. No Farrah, no Ashleigh, no Tammy, no Kim Carr. *I hope Beth doesn’t have a fit over me mentioning her like she did with Jeremy Ficarola (see “Epilogue” below.)

2. Unsurprisingly, NONE of the many many people who “worked with her,” much to their regret and chagrin, in the Cannabis Industry.

And 3. NOBODY from the DPOC, current or former. No Florice, no Lauren J-N, no Ada, no Gloria. Even though they were ALL SO CLOSE, like sisters. Showing there is no loyalty among cliquish mean-girls when the chips are down. And who can blame them. Melahat was the EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR of the DPOC when this shit hit the fan, making it very difficult for us Democrats to paint ourselves as much less corrupt than the very corrupt Republicans. “Yeah, what about Melahat??” they all scoff in their rehearsed talking point way.

Melahat Gets the Last Word.

As I am nothing if not the soul of fairness, I will let Melahat have the last word here. Because one thing you can’t say is that she’s not an entertaining ball of energy. This is her, talking to Jeff Flint, taped by the FBI, transcribed by Agent Adkins. Even though she KNEW that she was being recorded and helping to bust Ament and maybe Flint, it just filled her with rage that these two creeps (so similar to her) would DARE to rip her off:

“…That’s why when I heard these rumors, PTSD for me, Melahat! Here it is again. Jeff Flint working with my competitor behind my back. And now I don’t know. Like it, it was MY MONEY! It was my client’s money! I, I have a right to know who got it. Cause I’ll tell you, not only did I get dropped and I didn’t get shit, I’m still fucking working with them, but I lost a shit-ton of money on that project. At least a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That’s a lot of money in my life! It may not mean much to the Big Bear-owning, yacht-owning, riverhouse-owning person like Todd, or to you and you gorgeous life, I love seeing you with your beautiful family, but that was a lot of money for me. So there’s two hundred and twenty fucking thousand dollars of my client’s money not even including my friend’s money. I want to know, did Todd get any of it? …

“Cause I, I was going over all the invoices, and I seeing who’s getting paid, that’s why I’m all worked up over [Consultant 3] and and [Attorney 1] and those cocksuckers, um, and I’m like I didn’t see Todd’s name anywhere. So now I’m asking, HAS HE FUCKIN EVER GOTTEN PAID???“

Lowlife grifters.

Sentencing Friday. Whatever.

THE END

************

EPILOGUE – Ficarola and Krom

Funny. Yesterday our Irvine friend Jeremy Ficarola wrote a real factual (much less opinionated and snarky than this) piece on Irvine Watchdog, “Melahat Rafiei Poised to Avoid Prison for Bribery Scheme.” It explains the legal convolutions better than I, and includes this mild passage on the support letters from Beth Krom and Dan C:

“… the court received a letter from Krom describing Rafiei’s good nature and emotional support during a tragedy befalling Krom’s family. Moreover, Krom stated that, “between 2019 and 2022, [she] worked with Malahat and her firm to coach and advise some of their candidates.” This would suggest they worked together in a business capacity as recently as 2022. The court also received a positive character letter from political blogger and public relations principal, Dan Chmielewski. He described his relationship with Rafiei as that of a dear friend whom he relies on to “listen and offer advice on a variety of issues…”

Somehow this little passage caused Beth to flip out and attack Jeremy on Facebook, which he couldn’t see cuz she has him blocked. I guess politicians who write support letters for Melahat have a real chip on their shoulder about it… no wonder there are so few.