The scene could have been out of a movie: more than a dozen FBI agents striding out of elevators on the fourth floor of Los Angeles City Hall and descending on the office of Councilman Jose Huizar.
By lunchtime Wednesday, federal investigators had served search warrants on Huizar’s City Hall suite, one of his field offices and his Spanish Colonial Revival residence in Boyle Heights, carrying boxes of materials from at least two of those locations.
The agents’ coordinated operation, described by neighbors and a handful of city employees, delivered a serious jolt to City Hall, which has not experienced such a flurry of investigative activity in more than a decade.
The searches pose, at minimum, a serious political threat to Huizar, a City Hall veteran who is working to elect his wife, Richelle Huizar, to his Eastside council seat
FBI Special Agent David Nanz, who supervised the search warrant at City Hall, declined to comment on what the agents were looking for, saying the warrants executed Wednesday were under seal. He said the FBI was not planning on making any arrests in relation to the warrants on Wednesday.
Huizar spokesman Rick Coca referred questions about the raid to Stephen Kaufman, the councilman’s lawyer. “We’re trying to assess the situation and have no further comment at this time,” Kaufman said.
Mayor Eric Garcetti declined to comment. Council President Herb Wesson, in a statement, said the events “come as a surprise to each of us.”
“We will continue to do the jobs we were elected to do and will cooperate with authorities if asked,” he said.
Huizar, first elected to the council in 2005, faces term limits in two years and had already shifted his focus to his wife’s 2020 campaign to replace him. He represents neighborhoods stretching from downtown to Eagle Rock.
One Huizar staffer, who declined to give her name, said agents walked through the unlocked front door of the City Hall office and announced that they were serving a search warrant.
“They just told us not to touch anything and put us in the conference room,” she said. “We had literally just opened the office.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-jose-huizar-investigation-20181107-story.html