Aug 19, 2008 5:34 pm US/Pacific
L.A. City Attorney Focus Of FBI Probe
LOS ANGELES
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L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo admitted in 2007 that he had his city-owned SUV repaired at taxpayers' expense, after his wife hit a pole in a parking lot, and has acknowledged using employees to run his personal errands and to babysit his children.
CBS
A spokesman for Rocky Delgadillo said Tuesday that the Los Angeles city attorney has yet to be informed that he is the subject of an FBI criminal investigation, as was reported in a San Francisco newspaper.
The San Francisco Chronicle Tuesday quoted sources familiar with the reported investigation as saying that San Francisco-based agents recently went to Los Angeles to conduct interviews in what appears to be a wide-ranging probe of the 48-year-old Delgadillo.
But Delgadillo's spokesman, Nick Velasquez, said in a telephone interview Tuesday morning that no agents have interviewed the city attorney and that he has not been told that he is the subject of a criminal probe.
Los Angeles City Controller Laura Chick said she had also been questioned about her audit of the workers compensation unit supervised by Delgadillo. Chick would not provide details about the inquiries.
Delgadillo recently sued Chick after she tried to audit his workers compensation unit. Delgadillo agreed to suspend the suit pending City Council review.
The investigation is being run out of San Francisco because conflict of interest concerns might arise if the case were assigned to the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, which sometimes works cases with the city attorney, the Chronicle reported.
"Any allegation of wrongdoing is nothing but trash," Velasquez said, expressing certainty that Delgadillo's political opponents were behind any such claims. Now in his second four-year term, Delgadillo plans to run for state attorney general.
Velasquez said his boss was the victim of "classic political assassination."
Faulting the Chronicle article for including accounts of Delgadillo's previous ethical lapses, Velasquez accused the newspaper of carrying out a "hatchet job" through a story that was "over the top and nasty."
Delgadillo admitted last year that he had his city-owned SUV repaired at taxpayers' expense after his wife hit a pole in a parking lot. He has also acknowledged that he used city employees to run personal errands for him and to babysit his children, but he denied misusing taxpayers' funds.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)
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