October 24, 2025 • 32 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 2 (10/24) - Richie Greenberg comes on the show to talk about what is going on in San Francisco as Pres. Trump wants to send the National Guard in. More on all of the corruption going on in San Francisco and across California politics. Another "I Told You So" moment from John. 13 LA County employees were charged in an EDD-fraud scheme.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't. I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Did I mention the moistline? We're not going to have
it today, we will have it next Friday. So if
you want to start calling for next Friday's Moistline eight
seven seven Moist eighty six eight seven seven Moist eighty
six or usually talkback feature on the iHeartRadio back iHeart
Radio App. I am back from Iceland, but I'm gone
(00:26):
to warn you now. My body clock Iceland seven hours
later than we are. I was going to better around
ten every night. We have to be up early, you know,
for the tour we were on. So in about an hour,
I should be asleep.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
My surprise that you're here. I'm actually kudos to you
for not laking today.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I could have easily take him the day off, and
I'm so glad you didn't. And but I just didn't
know what I do all day today. See, I wouldn't
because I want to. I want to reset my body clock,
and I do a forced reset. I just do everything
I can to get myself and it works. If you
force yourself, you can change your body clock pretty quick.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Up in San Francisco. Daniel Lourie is the mayor, business guy, philanthropist.
People seem to be very happy he is. From what
I read, I hadn't been up there in a while,
slowly cleaning up San Francisco. Trump was threatening the National
Guard because there is still some problems. When I was
(01:35):
there a couple of years ago, my son went to
school up there for two years, and I just saw
things that I could not believe. Trump had said he's
sending in the National Guard recently, and then he's pulled
back because he and Daniel Lourie have reached an agreement
and Laurie wants some time to try to make some
(01:56):
progress without Trump calling in the National Guard. Trump has
set up Okay, let's get Richie Greenberg on. He's the
journalist and commentator up in San Francisco, and he's kind
of our unofficial correspondent whenever anything happens up there.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
How are you, hey, Welcome back from Iceland. I am jealous.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Oh it's gorgeous. Absolutely go there if you can.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
They say that you need one day for every hour
of time zone change, so you should be good in
about a week.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, that's what I read. See, that's why I just
jump in and tough it a. That's right, Richie, just
say beginning, it seems the fighting between Trump and these
cities are the city's claim, oh it's not so bad,
and Trump describes everything in apocalypse terms. And I noticed
even one of the judges today who's handling one of
(02:49):
the lawsuits, says, you know, one side says the world
is ending. The other side says, no, everything's cool. Well
it's not cool. How bad is it in Sanean Francisco?
Do you think the National Guard is necessary?
Speaker 4 (03:05):
So you've got the two different world views on what's
happening here, and the reality is somewhere in between. So
yet the city has slowly been cleaned up, not necessarily
because of Daniel Lurry, but because the cycle seems to
have been running out anyway. There's so few shops open,
(03:29):
if at all, in the shopping district, our downtown financial
district area, so the criminals aren't having they've got nothing
to hit anymore. We have two or three closed major malls,
so they don't have those looting of them.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
That is so sad.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, there's nothing left, there's nothing left to steal. Everything's
been stolen and all the business is closed.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
That's that's that's the reality of this and very manipulative
of what the actual situation is. Yeah, but the thing
is that we have a persistent and famous and well
documented drug market open, not necessarily twenty four hours as
it has been in the past, but we have these
(04:16):
transnational narco terrorists, as they're being labeled now right. They
operate during the wee hours of the morning before dawn,
and there are thank goodness for the citizen journalists, these
brave people that go out with their phones their cameras
on bicycles or high in the shadows, and they're documenting
(04:38):
the drug trade. They're documenting the drug addicts in their
typical sentinel fold. Just crowding along Market Street, our main
business thoroughfare, and in the side streets as well. That
is what is getting all of us, including myself, still
pissed off, because that is ruining the city. And as
(05:03):
we're finding, city Hall is just not taking the action,
and that is the impetus. That's the reason why Frum
and the federal administration wants to come in to clean
that out.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Why why do these administrations in San Francisco not want
to make the city clean and nice and thriving. Why
did they ruin the city in the name of insane
drug addicts? What was the faint of that? What is
the point of its still going on?
Speaker 4 (05:34):
Yeah, John, that is the million dollar question because the
hall leaders they are pretending that that drug market and
all of the deaths. We're having two to three deaths
overdose deaths per day, So I know in LA it's
a larger figure because you have a larger population. We
only have the one hundred thousand people that live here
(05:55):
approximately in San Francisco, but we're it's still in anither case.
It's a humanitarian disaster. City hall leadership and their appointed
department heads are pretending that that does not exist.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Okay, That's what's fascinating is they say the opposite, no
matter what, and you've seen it with your own eyes.
I saw it with my own eyes. I saw things
I couldn't believe when we used to go up there
regularly when my son was at school.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
And I'm thinking, how so, what's in it for them?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
What is in it for them to pretend that this
is not an overwhelming problem that has sucked the life
out of the city. You have all the crime, you
have all the closures, you have all the degradation of
a place that was beautiful.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
I don't get it.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Why would it be so terrible to say, yeah, this
place has gone to hell, let's stop all this bad behavior.
Why would they do that? Why do they want it
to be this way? It's a choice that.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
You make, yeah, of course, And first of all, you know,
it'll make them look bad. It'll make city hall leadership,
the mayor and others look bad that they could not
handle this themselves. That's where they're pushing back so hard.
They don't want Trump. They don't want the Feds to
come in and clean up what they couldn't handle, because
then everyone would say, yeah, we told you, we told
you so.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Right.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Secondly, there has to be a monetary money involvedment here
as well. You've got these non profit organizations that are
getting millions, ten millions, hundreds of millions of dollars atuable
their taxpayer's funds that are funding these addiction recovery or
you know, I'm using air quotes here, addiction to recovery.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And I got to believe, I got, yes, that's the
same problem we have here. And I've got to believe
then that the people in government are getting big kickbacks
that they dole out these grants to these fake nonprofits
who blow the money. You saw the two arrests in
LA in the past week where guys stole millions and
millions of dollars, and one of them was living a
(07:51):
high life running up millions of dollars of American Express bills.
So they must be getting kickbacks.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Yeah, of course, either that or they're being threatened by
cartels or both. I think we here think it's a
combination of all of that. And it's just it's unfortunate
that Trump decided to listen to Lurie and say to
Daniel Lurie. And but there was a side, snide, little
side story there. You have to look at what Trump
(08:20):
bactory said. He posted it on True's social where he
said that we can do a better job. We can
do it, you know, the Feds. We can do it quickly,
much stronger, much faster, and we have different laws than
what you are what you have on the ground, mister Lourie.
But you know what you think you could do it,
Go ahead, we have it, you have a shot at it.
That's what he said. But we all know Trump, we
(08:42):
know his art of the deal right, and how he's
dealing internationally and globally with tariffs and like that. That
he essentially handed a rope to Mayor Lurie to hand
him to hang himself, because we know that Lurie probably
is going to fail and then they'll come in and uh,
you know this is this, we see it, We see
(09:03):
this coming from a mile away.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
That's fascinating. Thank you for coming on, Richie Greenbergh.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Pleasure.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
So he's good talking to you, Richie Greenberg. And he's
a journalist and commentator up in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I don't think anybody understands the depth of the corruption
throughout California and in the big cities. Talk more about
this coming up.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
You're listening to John Cobelts on demand from KFI A
M six forty.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Just had Richie Greenberg on up in San Francisco.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
The Mayor, Daniel Lurie is desperate to to to try
to convince Trump not to send the National Guard in,
and he's gotten a reprieve. Trump said, okay, you say
you can do this by yourself. And if he doesn't
do it by himself, then Trump is the hammer is
going to come down. And Trump is winning these uh,
(09:55):
these cases in court. He can send in the national
Guard in a lot of situations. He just won another
round uh for sending national Guard into Portland. And you
know he won about sending the National Guard into la
So the president can take control over state national guards
and have them perform these kinds of duties. Now I
(10:18):
would want having having been to having been to San
Francisco and seen it with my own eyes, having seen
what's going on in Portland enough on online videos and television,
I don't know why you wouldn't want Trump in the
National Guard in I really don't get it. And I
know there's a lot of rhetoric about how dare he
(10:39):
and you know this is this is an autocrat, this
is an emperor, this is a king. Sit down, come down. Okay,
that's great, overheated rhetoric. The truth is, it's some of
the most disgusting neighborhoods, violent disgusting neighborhoods when you have
(11:00):
drug addicts everywhere, defecating all over the place, needles everywhere,
all the crazy, insane behavior. Like I said, one of
the scariest moments my wife and I ever had together
was stuck in traffic. I think on Sixth in San Francisco,
and uh, we were surround the whole The whole block
was just dozens and dozens of drug addicts, crazy drug addicts.
(11:22):
They're all living on the streets. They all they had
living rooms. One guy had a really nice couch at
an end table in a lamp.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Did he have pillows?
Speaker 1 (11:31):
He had pillows, blanket, Yeah, yes, he had.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
He had everything you'd want except the roof. And there
was a lot of this. I don't know where they
stole the furniture from, but they're happy because they're zonked
out in whatever it is they're taking.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
It's like, I remember, I'll never forget that day. It's like,
why would you want this? Okay?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
So Richie Greenberg, who calls in with reports from San
Francisco occasionally, I think he hit on the two things.
This is why Number one, the local politicians are in
on it. They're getting a cut the homeless money. As
I told you is the whole system is corrupt. And
(12:14):
here in La we've had two real estate guys just
a few days ago. They've been arrested by the Feds.
They took millions and millions of homeless money, spent it on.
One guy was flipping real estate with it. The other
guy was running up huge American Express bills. But everybody
at city hall would know about this because this is
(12:35):
tens of millions of dollars these guys had. Okay, somebody
knew about it at city hall. They don't care. They
must be getting a kickback. Second thing is, and this
is what Trump has been insisting. These are narco terrorist
organizations and they will kill you if you get in
the way. You know how down in Mexico, I don't
know how many dozens of journalists have been killed, how
(12:55):
many politicians have been killed. Anybody pokes his head up
and says, we're going to go after the drug cartels.
It's going to be zero tolerance. They get a bullet
in the head and they're hanging from a light post
the next day. I mean, they've had dozens, maybe hundreds
of journalists and politicians killed in Mexico by the drug cartels.
(13:19):
So that's got to be it. It's like the council
people in San Francisco and here in La it's like
there's probably a deal. They take a cut one percent,
five any single digit percent is still a lot of money,
because there's hundreds of millions of dollars out there, billions really,
(13:40):
so they get their little cut. They promised to keep
their mouth shut and they won't be hanging from a
light bulb. There's no other reason you'd allow this, But
nobody wants to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
But it has to be the true.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I have never seen a civilization in my life make
such a harsh turn like in San Francisco's case, and
La too to some extent, where you have beautiful areas
that everyone loves and enjoys, and people come from all
over the world to enjoy it as well, brings in
lots of tourism money way, and we intentionally allow it
(14:23):
to be run by the sickest, craziest people that humanity
can produce. There had to be an upside for this,
and the upside is personal wealth. And the upside mayby
is you don't die, you let these drug cartels do
their thing.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Trump. Well, I take a break, but I heard Trump.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
They glew up a sixth venezuelan and drug boat, and
he said yesterday very clearly, we will kill them if
they come here, we will kill them.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
And everybody, Oh my.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
God, of course you'd kill them because those drugs are
killing hundreds of thousands of people here in this country.
Why wouldn't you blow up the boat before they get
here and kill Americans? All right, more coming up.
Speaker 5 (15:10):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Tonight, the Dodgers take on the Toronto Blue Jays for
Game one of the World Series. First pitch at five o'clock.
Listen to all games on AM five seventy, LA Sports
and on the iHeartRadio app brought to you by Strauss,
the official work where partner of Major League Baseball. I
know people they're offended that Toronto has a baseball team.
(15:37):
They're not even yes, they think baseball is an American sport,
and they're not even necessarily Dodger fans are baseball fans,
but they don't want a Canadian team winning our World Series.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Are you offended?
Speaker 2 (15:52):
I'm not offended, but I never liked having Canadian teams.
I don't know, it just bothered me. They should get
their own baseball league. Okay, you know they championship it
was you know, we had the American League in the
National League.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
It was it was you know, that's that was the tradition.
They have their own football league. They have their own
football league.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Sure, uh they you know, it's it's just weird to
have Toronto as the World champions.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
I know it's the World Series, so yes, kind of.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So anyway, I just wanted to tell you there's a
lot of people rooting for the Dodgers who ordinarily wouldn't
be uh necessarily, you know, if they were playing Seattle.
I don't think the intensity would be as strong.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
All right, now, I told you I was going to
spend maybe one segment every hour about I told you
so because a few things happened while I was gone
that have to be addressed here. Well, today the story
broke that there are US Senators Scott from Florida and
(17:01):
Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, and they want the idiot city
Council President, Marquise Harris Dawson. They want him to turn
over a huge number of documents on the LA Fire Department.
They're staffing their wildfire preparations, the water supply.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And everything else.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
And so they're going to do the digging because not
only is the city incompetent, they're not talking. They keep
hoping this thing is going to go away. And this
is what's good about Trump. He's become like a super
mayor here for Los Angeles. You don't want to clean
up the homeless, will clean up the homeless. You don't
want to clean up the criminals, will clean up the criminals.
(17:45):
We'll send in the National Guard. You're not going to
help us with the legal allience, Fine, we'll do it ourselves.
All the major issues that have been making helping to
make LA a hellhole that's has no interest in. Neither
is the city council. So Trump is going to barge
his way in and use whatever federal power he can.
And now he's backed up by the by the Senators
(18:07):
Rick Scott and Ron Johnson. Karen Bass should have come
clean within a few weeks and admitted the massive failure,
and she won't.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Have we heard from Janice.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
No, we haven't. She hasn't said one word publicly about this.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
She's still making seven hundred and fifty k.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yes she is, Yes, she is.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Scott and Johnson give Harris Dawson a deadline November three.
They want to know about the diversity, equity and inclusion
hiring policies. And that's what got one of the LA
City councilmen upset Hugo Solo Martinez.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Why does everybody have had hyphenated names?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Just pick one. He's outraged that they're asking Di I question. No,
I think Di I had a lot to do with it.
A lot of these people. I mean, I mean, I
mean Jennie's Connunia has had no business running the DWP none.
I can't imagine why anybody would look at her resume
and then yeah, I mean have you heard her talk? Well,
(19:12):
I don't know anybody would say, yeah, let's pay her
three quarters of a million dollars to run this vast
water and electrical system here in the city of Los Angeles.
And then she leaves the damn reservoir empty, one hundred
and seventeen million gallons, not a drop in there. Of course,
she wasn't qualified. If you don't think she was a
DEI higher, then why why was she hired? You tell
(19:34):
me what the reason was, because apparently she was too
stupid to fill up the reservoir. And that's all. That's
what the stuff is. This is just stupidity. Like in
the case while I was talking before, why you know
some of these cities let their nice neighborhoods go to hell. Yeah,
they're they're they're they're ciphoning off some of the homeless money, right,
(19:55):
and they don't want to piss off the drug cartels.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
That's the motivation there. In this case.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
The only explanation is sheer stupidity, which I think Jenny's
canonias as in spades.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Uh not.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
A story that came out was the fire hydrant story.
You remember, the fire hydrants ran dry in the first
hours and they they they had trouble finding where they
could get water from. Rick Crawford is a former LA
Fire Department of battalion chief who retired last year, said
(20:32):
the fire department should have called the d w P
after the wind forecast came in and to find out
that the reservoir was empty.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Wait, weren't some of those fire hydrants empty or broken?
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Oh oh yeah? They found one thousand of them. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
they were, they were they were busted. And this is
what I'm saying is if Karen Bash should have had
a command center as soon as the well, First of all,
it's no excuse for the reservoir not being filled. Okay,
that was eleven months. There was no excuse for that
everybody should be fired connected to that decision. Fired, fired,
(21:07):
if not criminally charged. How could this not be a
crime these You could have filled the reservoir simply by
putting a hose in the hole. They were trying to
find water trucks and water tenders. But it says here
(21:34):
there was a delay in asking the City and Management
Department support and getting the trucks. That's pretty vague, but
this is from the official report.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Well what was the delay?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Why was there a delay, Like wouldn't people immediately say, Hey,
the reservoir is empty and the fire hydrants are dry,
where can we get the water tenders? The water trucks,
the city water trucks, their tanker trucks. They were available,
but they're not operated by emergency personnel, so they need
(22:06):
escorts to drive safely into the fire zone. The escorts
weren't available. Again, that should have been part of a
master plan. They should have gone through all They should
have checked all these boxes on January first. Now, Crawford,
it's funny the people who retired from the LA Fire
(22:28):
Department have been telling the truth to the La Times.
I think of the people who retired from the fire
department in recent years who are now quoted as experts.
If they were still running the place, this might not
have happened. But the DEI replacements, really, it's just some
of the worst employees you could have.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I mean, I've ever seen, because Crawford says if officials
had prepared.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Properly before the fire broke out and the winds became extreme,
they would have earlier about the empty reservoir. They could
have had the water tenders nearby, they wouldn't have had
a situation where you were running out of water. And
(23:17):
then finally, the fire department, as you know, thought the
fire from January first, was out, but they didn't use
thermal imaging to confirm that. They have thermal imaging technology
to see if there's heat coming. And the interim fire chief,
Ronnie Villanouiva, actually said, oh, we did everything we could do,
(23:40):
actually said that out loud, that it wouldn't have made
a difference nothing. But I've seen that excuse for everything. Oh,
even if we had one hundred and seventeen million gallons,
wouldn't have made a difference. Even if we had the
firefighters posted up in the hills that day, wouldn't have
made a difference.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Well, why do we even have a fire department.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Apparently, nothing they do and nothing they have would have
made a distance, would have made a difference in this.
They now there's a story that federal investigators have obtained
proof that smoke was coming out of the ground at
(24:24):
the fireside between January first, the original fire, and January seventh,
when it blew into the huge inferno, So there was
smoke coming out of the ground that week.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Smoke was coming out of the ground.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
A former arson investigator with the La County Sheriff's Department
at Nord Scott said, it's hard to justify the decision
not to deploy thermal imaging. It's not extraordinarily difficult to do.
It's used specifically to prevent rekindling fires. It's normal protocol.
They didn't do that either. I mean, there's talk about
(25:01):
a half a dozen, maybe ten, major areas. They simply
it's not like they tried and they missed or they
did it badly. They just didn't do it. More coming up.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Devra's going to have the news coming up in just
a few minutes. Here's another one the La County DA
Nathan Hockman.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
He charged not one, not two, not five.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Not ten, but thirteen county employees, thirteen employees from seven
different departments with felony grand theft. They stole four hundred
and thirty seven thousand dollars in state unemployment benefits thirteen
county workers. They submitted fraudulent claims to the California Employment
(26:02):
Development Department. That was the agency that gave away thirty
plus billions of dollars to criminals, much of it not recovered,
and it turned out some of the criminals were in
the county government offices.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
And here's Hakman and.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
The La County Assistant Orditor Control of Robert Campbell, talking
about this recently.
Speaker 6 (26:27):
What we're here today to talk about, sadly, is thirteen
different county employees who took advantage of COVID relief and
they did it in an illegal way. These thirteen people
here received over four hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars
between twenty twenty and twenty twenty three. They represent seven
(26:49):
different county agencies. They worked at full.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Time at the time.
Speaker 6 (26:54):
They basically indicated that they were unemployed. It is shocking
at these county ployees who are receiving their county check
every single two weeks, are also telling eded at the
same time at their unemployed We will not tolerate this
type of illegal conduct by anyone, but especially by county
(27:15):
employees who are given that additional trust, particularly with the
county's money, public services of public trust.
Speaker 7 (27:23):
As the district attorney correctly pointed out, the vast majority
of the county workforce works tirelessly to represent and assist
some of the most vulnerable people in our population, and
we all deserve and should expect a government that is
built on integrity.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
I want to send a warning to all county employees
for that very small sub section of greedy fraudsters.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I will guarantee you we're coming after you.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Those two actually had a small orchestra behind them. That's
very nice. I think it was a social media video, yeah,
and posted. I guess so, I just uh, I get.
I've got the names of these people, the fraudsters, the fraudsters, yes,
uh allah Aga Agamalian thirty seven thousand dollars a la
(28:17):
stole according to the Feds.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
According to Nathan Hockman, rather.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
U Aurora Lopez Battista stole ninety three hundred according to
the DA Jessica Antonia Chandler forty eight nine hundred, Chandra
Comico Tisdale fifty seven thousand, Kelly Collins fifty six thousand.
(28:41):
Also Derek Anthony, Kalela, Donisha, Nicole Broomfeld, Ivan Jacob Mariskau
married Teresa Thomas, Raquel Martinez Alvarez, Shalita Violajamo, Tony Cheris.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Pittman, and Yini Aga Begian all criminals, says Nathan Hackman.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
And the state had such a bad or, I should say,
a non existent system of tracking whether somebody filing for
unemployment benefits was really unemployed. They couldn't even catch these
thirteen people who worked in government. These people were working
for the county while stealing state money. I don't think
(29:27):
it would have been hard to scour that database. And
it took them up to five years to catch some
of these people. Apparently public and private employers in La
lost ten billion dollars just in this county to fraud
from COVID ten billion. There's a lot of people when
(29:52):
you call county offices and the answer to the phone,
they're criminals. A lot of people you go up to
the desk. How can I help you? Criminals? That's that's
a big number. And you know what, I'm sorry. If
you're caught doing this once, I wonder how many other times,
(30:13):
because apparently most of the time, everybody.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Gets away with it. That's why.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
That's why although this wasn't his case, it wasn't a
federal case, it was a state case. This is Nathan Hawkman,
but Bill A. Sale is so important as the US
attorney because he's the one who's now uncovering all the
criminals involved in the homeless industry here in La See.
You get, you get, you get real tough investigators like
(30:42):
Assalian Hawkman. Life changes suddenly. There's dozens of people being
arraigned and charged. You know, a lot of these people
are going to go to jail. I mean it's like
a casino. All right, we come back Alex Stone from
ABC News and we're going to talk about Oh. Alaska
(31:06):
Airlines they they all their flights were grounded last night.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
I'm glad.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
I was gonna say a good thing. You weren't gone Alaska.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Yeah, I know, I know, it was it was that
was I was. I was up for about twenty four
hours yesterday.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
I mean, you know, we scheduled this, but you don't
realize how tough it's going to be until you do it. Yeah,
and boy, they really don't serve food anymore on planes.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
You have to bring your own.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, I know. It was just you can just just
they don't care. You just die there in your seat.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Oh, I know, nobody cares about anything anymore.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
No, nobody does.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
No, we're on our own.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
That's you know what I keep telling people that.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
It's so true.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
You're nobody. Nobody cares about your problems. Nobody's going to
help you.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Try being in a hospital.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Seriously, no, I know, we'll dever. Marcus Live in the
KFI twenty four hour Newsroom. Hey, you've been listening to
the John Cobalt Show podcast. You can always hear the
show live on KFI Am six forty from one to
four pm every Monday through Friday, and of course, anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio app
Can't. I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Did I mention the moistline? We're not going to have
it today, we will have it next Friday. So if
you want to start calling for next Friday's Moistline eight
seven seven Moist eighty six eight seven seven Moist eighty
six or usually talkback feature on the iHeartRadio back iHeart
Radio App. I am back from Iceland, but I'm gone
(00:26):
to warn you now. My body clock Iceland seven hours
later than we are. I was going to better around
ten every night. We have to be up early, you know,
for the tour we were on. So in about an hour,
I should be asleep.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
My surprise that you're here. I'm actually kudos to you
for not laking today.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I could have easily take him the day off, and
I'm so glad you didn't. And but I just didn't
know what I do all day today. See, I wouldn't
because I want to. I want to reset my body clock,
and I do a forced reset. I just do everything
I can to get myself and it works. If you
force yourself, you can change your body clock pretty quick.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Up in San Francisco. Daniel Lourie is the mayor, business guy, philanthropist.
People seem to be very happy he is. From what
I read, I hadn't been up there in a while,
slowly cleaning up San Francisco. Trump was threatening the National
Guard because there is still some problems. When I was
(01:35):
there a couple of years ago, my son went to
school up there for two years, and I just saw
things that I could not believe. Trump had said he's
sending in the National Guard recently, and then he's pulled
back because he and Daniel Lourie have reached an agreement
and Laurie wants some time to try to make some
(01:56):
progress without Trump calling in the National Guard. Trump has
set up Okay, let's get Richie Greenberg on. He's the
journalist and commentator up in San Francisco, and he's kind
of our unofficial correspondent whenever anything happens up there.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
How are you, hey, Welcome back from Iceland. I am jealous.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Oh it's gorgeous. Absolutely go there if you can.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
They say that you need one day for every hour
of time zone change, so you should be good in
about a week.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, that's what I read. See, that's why I just
jump in and tough it a. That's right, Richie, just
say beginning, it seems the fighting between Trump and these
cities are the city's claim, oh it's not so bad,
and Trump describes everything in apocalypse terms. And I noticed
even one of the judges today who's handling one of
(02:49):
the lawsuits, says, you know, one side says the world
is ending. The other side says, no, everything's cool. Well
it's not cool. How bad is it in Sanean Francisco?
Do you think the National Guard is necessary?
Speaker 4 (03:05):
So you've got the two different world views on what's
happening here, and the reality is somewhere in between. So
yet the city has slowly been cleaned up, not necessarily
because of Daniel Lurry, but because the cycle seems to
have been running out anyway. There's so few shops open,
(03:29):
if at all, in the shopping district, our downtown financial
district area, so the criminals aren't having they've got nothing
to hit anymore. We have two or three closed major malls,
so they don't have those looting of them.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
That is so sad.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, there's nothing left, there's nothing left to steal. Everything's
been stolen and all the business is closed.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
That's that's that's the reality of this and very manipulative
of what the actual situation is. Yeah, but the thing
is that we have a persistent and famous and well
documented drug market open, not necessarily twenty four hours as
it has been in the past, but we have these
(04:16):
transnational narco terrorists, as they're being labeled now right. They
operate during the wee hours of the morning before dawn,
and there are thank goodness for the citizen journalists, these
brave people that go out with their phones their cameras
on bicycles or high in the shadows, and they're documenting
(04:38):
the drug trade. They're documenting the drug addicts in their
typical sentinel fold. Just crowding along Market Street, our main
business thoroughfare, and in the side streets as well. That
is what is getting all of us, including myself, still
pissed off, because that is ruining the city. And as
(05:03):
we're finding, city Hall is just not taking the action,
and that is the impetus. That's the reason why Frum
and the federal administration wants to come in to clean
that out.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Why why do these administrations in San Francisco not want
to make the city clean and nice and thriving. Why
did they ruin the city in the name of insane
drug addicts? What was the faint of that? What is
the point of its still going on?
Speaker 4 (05:34):
Yeah, John, that is the million dollar question because the
hall leaders they are pretending that that drug market and
all of the deaths. We're having two to three deaths
overdose deaths per day, So I know in LA it's
a larger figure because you have a larger population. We
only have the one hundred thousand people that live here
(05:55):
approximately in San Francisco, but we're it's still in anither case.
It's a humanitarian disaster. City hall leadership and their appointed
department heads are pretending that that does not exist.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Okay, That's what's fascinating is they say the opposite, no
matter what, and you've seen it with your own eyes.
I saw it with my own eyes. I saw things
I couldn't believe when we used to go up there
regularly when my son was at school.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
And I'm thinking, how so, what's in it for them?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
What is in it for them to pretend that this
is not an overwhelming problem that has sucked the life
out of the city. You have all the crime, you
have all the closures, you have all the degradation of
a place that was beautiful.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
I don't get it.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Why would it be so terrible to say, yeah, this
place has gone to hell, let's stop all this bad behavior.
Why would they do that? Why do they want it
to be this way? It's a choice that.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
You make, yeah, of course, And first of all, you know,
it'll make them look bad. It'll make city hall leadership,
the mayor and others look bad that they could not
handle this themselves. That's where they're pushing back so hard.
They don't want Trump. They don't want the Feds to
come in and clean up what they couldn't handle, because
then everyone would say, yeah, we told you, we told
you so.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Right.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Secondly, there has to be a monetary money involvedment here
as well. You've got these non profit organizations that are
getting millions, ten millions, hundreds of millions of dollars atuable
their taxpayer's funds that are funding these addiction recovery or
you know, I'm using air quotes here, addiction to recovery.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And I got to believe, I got, yes, that's the
same problem we have here. And I've got to believe
then that the people in government are getting big kickbacks
that they dole out these grants to these fake nonprofits
who blow the money. You saw the two arrests in
LA in the past week where guys stole millions and
millions of dollars, and one of them was living a
(07:51):
high life running up millions of dollars of American Express bills.
So they must be getting kickbacks.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Yeah, of course, either that or they're being threatened by
cartels or both. I think we here think it's a
combination of all of that. And it's just it's unfortunate
that Trump decided to listen to Lurie and say to
Daniel Lurie. And but there was a side, snide, little
side story there. You have to look at what Trump
(08:20):
bactory said. He posted it on True's social where he
said that we can do a better job. We can
do it, you know, the Feds. We can do it quickly,
much stronger, much faster, and we have different laws than
what you are what you have on the ground, mister Lourie.
But you know what you think you could do it,
Go ahead, we have it, you have a shot at it.
That's what he said. But we all know Trump, we
(08:42):
know his art of the deal right, and how he's
dealing internationally and globally with tariffs and like that. That
he essentially handed a rope to Mayor Lurie to hand
him to hang himself, because we know that Lurie probably
is going to fail and then they'll come in and uh,
you know this is this, we see it, We see
(09:03):
this coming from a mile away.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
That's fascinating. Thank you for coming on, Richie Greenbergh.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Pleasure.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
So he's good talking to you, Richie Greenberg. And he's
a journalist and commentator up in San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I don't think anybody understands the depth of the corruption
throughout California and in the big cities. Talk more about
this coming up.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
You're listening to John Cobelts on demand from KFI A
M six forty.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Just had Richie Greenberg on up in San Francisco.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
The Mayor, Daniel Lurie is desperate to to to try
to convince Trump not to send the National Guard in,
and he's gotten a reprieve. Trump said, okay, you say
you can do this by yourself. And if he doesn't
do it by himself, then Trump is the hammer is
going to come down. And Trump is winning these uh,
(09:55):
these cases in court. He can send in the national
Guard in a lot of situations. He just won another
round uh for sending national Guard into Portland. And you
know he won about sending the National Guard into la
So the president can take control over state national guards
and have them perform these kinds of duties. Now I
(10:18):
would want having having been to having been to San
Francisco and seen it with my own eyes, having seen
what's going on in Portland enough on online videos and television,
I don't know why you wouldn't want Trump in the
National Guard in I really don't get it. And I
know there's a lot of rhetoric about how dare he
(10:39):
and you know this is this is an autocrat, this
is an emperor, this is a king. Sit down, come down. Okay,
that's great, overheated rhetoric. The truth is, it's some of
the most disgusting neighborhoods, violent disgusting neighborhoods when you have
(11:00):
drug addicts everywhere, defecating all over the place, needles everywhere,
all the crazy, insane behavior. Like I said, one of
the scariest moments my wife and I ever had together
was stuck in traffic. I think on Sixth in San Francisco,
and uh, we were surround the whole The whole block
was just dozens and dozens of drug addicts, crazy drug addicts.
(11:22):
They're all living on the streets. They all they had
living rooms. One guy had a really nice couch at
an end table in a lamp.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Did he have pillows?
Speaker 1 (11:31):
He had pillows, blanket, Yeah, yes, he had.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
He had everything you'd want except the roof. And there
was a lot of this. I don't know where they
stole the furniture from, but they're happy because they're zonked
out in whatever it is they're taking.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
It's like, I remember, I'll never forget that day. It's like,
why would you want this? Okay?
Speaker 2 (11:52):
So Richie Greenberg, who calls in with reports from San
Francisco occasionally, I think he hit on the two things.
This is why Number one, the local politicians are in
on it. They're getting a cut the homeless money. As
I told you is the whole system is corrupt. And
(12:14):
here in La we've had two real estate guys just
a few days ago. They've been arrested by the Feds.
They took millions and millions of homeless money, spent it on.
One guy was flipping real estate with it. The other
guy was running up huge American Express bills. But everybody
at city hall would know about this because this is
(12:35):
tens of millions of dollars these guys had. Okay, somebody
knew about it at city hall. They don't care. They
must be getting a kickback. Second thing is, and this
is what Trump has been insisting. These are narco terrorist
organizations and they will kill you if you get in
the way. You know how down in Mexico, I don't
know how many dozens of journalists have been killed, how
(12:55):
many politicians have been killed. Anybody pokes his head up
and says, we're going to go after the drug cartels.
It's going to be zero tolerance. They get a bullet
in the head and they're hanging from a light post
the next day. I mean, they've had dozens, maybe hundreds
of journalists and politicians killed in Mexico by the drug cartels.
(13:19):
So that's got to be it. It's like the council
people in San Francisco and here in La it's like
there's probably a deal. They take a cut one percent,
five any single digit percent is still a lot of money,
because there's hundreds of millions of dollars out there, billions really,
(13:40):
so they get their little cut. They promised to keep
their mouth shut and they won't be hanging from a
light bulb. There's no other reason you'd allow this, But
nobody wants to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
But it has to be the true.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
I have never seen a civilization in my life make
such a harsh turn like in San Francisco's case, and
La too to some extent, where you have beautiful areas
that everyone loves and enjoys, and people come from all
over the world to enjoy it as well, brings in
lots of tourism money way, and we intentionally allow it
(14:23):
to be run by the sickest, craziest people that humanity
can produce. There had to be an upside for this,
and the upside is personal wealth. And the upside mayby
is you don't die, you let these drug cartels do
their thing.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
Trump. Well, I take a break, but I heard Trump.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
They glew up a sixth venezuelan and drug boat, and
he said yesterday very clearly, we will kill them if
they come here, we will kill them.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
And everybody, Oh my.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
God, of course you'd kill them because those drugs are
killing hundreds of thousands of people here in this country.
Why wouldn't you blow up the boat before they get
here and kill Americans? All right, more coming up.
Speaker 5 (15:10):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Tonight, the Dodgers take on the Toronto Blue Jays for
Game one of the World Series. First pitch at five o'clock.
Listen to all games on AM five seventy, LA Sports
and on the iHeartRadio app brought to you by Strauss,
the official work where partner of Major League Baseball. I
know people they're offended that Toronto has a baseball team.
(15:37):
They're not even yes, they think baseball is an American sport,
and they're not even necessarily Dodger fans are baseball fans,
but they don't want a Canadian team winning our World Series.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Are you offended?
Speaker 2 (15:52):
I'm not offended, but I never liked having Canadian teams.
I don't know, it just bothered me. They should get
their own baseball league. Okay, you know they championship it
was you know, we had the American League in the
National League.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
It was it was you know, that's that was the tradition.
They have their own football league. They have their own
football league.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Sure, uh they you know, it's it's just weird to
have Toronto as the World champions.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
I know it's the World Series, so yes, kind of.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So anyway, I just wanted to tell you there's a
lot of people rooting for the Dodgers who ordinarily wouldn't
be uh necessarily, you know, if they were playing Seattle.
I don't think the intensity would be as strong.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
All right, now, I told you I was going to
spend maybe one segment every hour about I told you
so because a few things happened while I was gone
that have to be addressed here. Well, today the story
broke that there are US Senators Scott from Florida and
(17:01):
Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, and they want the idiot city
Council President, Marquise Harris Dawson. They want him to turn
over a huge number of documents on the LA Fire Department.
They're staffing their wildfire preparations, the water supply.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And everything else.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
And so they're going to do the digging because not
only is the city incompetent, they're not talking. They keep
hoping this thing is going to go away. And this
is what's good about Trump. He's become like a super
mayor here for Los Angeles. You don't want to clean
up the homeless, will clean up the homeless. You don't
want to clean up the criminals, will clean up the criminals.
(17:45):
We'll send in the National Guard. You're not going to
help us with the legal allience, Fine, we'll do it ourselves.
All the major issues that have been making helping to
make LA a hellhole that's has no interest in. Neither
is the city council. So Trump is going to barge
his way in and use whatever federal power he can.
And now he's backed up by the by the Senators
(18:07):
Rick Scott and Ron Johnson. Karen Bass should have come
clean within a few weeks and admitted the massive failure,
and she won't.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Have we heard from Janice.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
No, we haven't. She hasn't said one word publicly about this.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
She's still making seven hundred and fifty k.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
Yes she is, Yes, she is.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Scott and Johnson give Harris Dawson a deadline November three.
They want to know about the diversity, equity and inclusion
hiring policies. And that's what got one of the LA
City councilmen upset Hugo Solo Martinez.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Why does everybody have had hyphenated names?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Just pick one. He's outraged that they're asking Di I question. No,
I think Di I had a lot to do with it.
A lot of these people. I mean, I mean, I
mean Jennie's Connunia has had no business running the DWP none.
I can't imagine why anybody would look at her resume
and then yeah, I mean have you heard her talk? Well,
(19:12):
I don't know anybody would say, yeah, let's pay her
three quarters of a million dollars to run this vast
water and electrical system here in the city of Los Angeles.
And then she leaves the damn reservoir empty, one hundred
and seventeen million gallons, not a drop in there. Of course,
she wasn't qualified. If you don't think she was a
DEI higher, then why why was she hired? You tell
(19:34):
me what the reason was, because apparently she was too
stupid to fill up the reservoir. And that's all. That's
what the stuff is. This is just stupidity. Like in
the case while I was talking before, why you know
some of these cities let their nice neighborhoods go to hell. Yeah,
they're they're they're they're ciphoning off some of the homeless money, right,
(19:55):
and they don't want to piss off the drug cartels.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
That's the motivation there. In this case.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
The only explanation is sheer stupidity, which I think Jenny's
canonias as in spades.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Uh not.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
A story that came out was the fire hydrant story.
You remember, the fire hydrants ran dry in the first
hours and they they they had trouble finding where they
could get water from. Rick Crawford is a former LA
Fire Department of battalion chief who retired last year, said
(20:32):
the fire department should have called the d w P
after the wind forecast came in and to find out
that the reservoir was empty.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Wait, weren't some of those fire hydrants empty or broken?
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Oh oh yeah? They found one thousand of them. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
they were, they were they were busted. And this is
what I'm saying is if Karen Bash should have had
a command center as soon as the well, First of all,
it's no excuse for the reservoir not being filled. Okay,
that was eleven months. There was no excuse for that
everybody should be fired connected to that decision. Fired, fired,
(21:07):
if not criminally charged. How could this not be a
crime these You could have filled the reservoir simply by
putting a hose in the hole. They were trying to
find water trucks and water tenders. But it says here
(21:34):
there was a delay in asking the City and Management
Department support and getting the trucks. That's pretty vague, but
this is from the official report.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Well what was the delay?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Why was there a delay, Like wouldn't people immediately say, Hey,
the reservoir is empty and the fire hydrants are dry,
where can we get the water tenders? The water trucks,
the city water trucks, their tanker trucks. They were available,
but they're not operated by emergency personnel, so they need
(22:06):
escorts to drive safely into the fire zone. The escorts
weren't available. Again, that should have been part of a
master plan. They should have gone through all They should
have checked all these boxes on January first. Now, Crawford,
it's funny the people who retired from the LA Fire
(22:28):
Department have been telling the truth to the La Times.
I think of the people who retired from the fire
department in recent years who are now quoted as experts.
If they were still running the place, this might not
have happened. But the DEI replacements, really, it's just some
of the worst employees you could have.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I mean, I've ever seen, because Crawford says if officials
had prepared.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Properly before the fire broke out and the winds became extreme,
they would have earlier about the empty reservoir. They could
have had the water tenders nearby, they wouldn't have had
a situation where you were running out of water. And
(23:17):
then finally, the fire department, as you know, thought the
fire from January first, was out, but they didn't use
thermal imaging to confirm that. They have thermal imaging technology
to see if there's heat coming. And the interim fire chief,
Ronnie Villanouiva, actually said, oh, we did everything we could do,
(23:40):
actually said that out loud, that it wouldn't have made
a difference nothing. But I've seen that excuse for everything. Oh,
even if we had one hundred and seventeen million gallons,
wouldn't have made a difference. Even if we had the
firefighters posted up in the hills that day, wouldn't have
made a difference.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Well, why do we even have a fire department.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Apparently, nothing they do and nothing they have would have
made a distance, would have made a difference in this.
They now there's a story that federal investigators have obtained
proof that smoke was coming out of the ground at
(24:24):
the fireside between January first, the original fire, and January seventh,
when it blew into the huge inferno, So there was
smoke coming out of the ground that week.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Smoke was coming out of the ground.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
A former arson investigator with the La County Sheriff's Department
at Nord Scott said, it's hard to justify the decision
not to deploy thermal imaging. It's not extraordinarily difficult to do.
It's used specifically to prevent rekindling fires. It's normal protocol.
They didn't do that either. I mean, there's talk about
(25:01):
a half a dozen, maybe ten, major areas. They simply
it's not like they tried and they missed or they
did it badly. They just didn't do it. More coming up.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Devra's going to have the news coming up in just
a few minutes. Here's another one the La County DA
Nathan Hockman.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
He charged not one, not two, not five.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Not ten, but thirteen county employees, thirteen employees from seven
different departments with felony grand theft. They stole four hundred
and thirty seven thousand dollars in state unemployment benefits thirteen
county workers. They submitted fraudulent claims to the California Employment
(26:02):
Development Department. That was the agency that gave away thirty
plus billions of dollars to criminals, much of it not recovered,
and it turned out some of the criminals were in
the county government offices.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
And here's Hakman and.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
The La County Assistant Orditor Control of Robert Campbell, talking
about this recently.
Speaker 6 (26:27):
What we're here today to talk about, sadly, is thirteen
different county employees who took advantage of COVID relief and
they did it in an illegal way. These thirteen people
here received over four hundred and thirty seven thousand dollars
between twenty twenty and twenty twenty three. They represent seven
(26:49):
different county agencies. They worked at full.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Time at the time.
Speaker 6 (26:54):
They basically indicated that they were unemployed. It is shocking
at these county ployees who are receiving their county check
every single two weeks, are also telling eded at the
same time at their unemployed We will not tolerate this
type of illegal conduct by anyone, but especially by county
(27:15):
employees who are given that additional trust, particularly with the
county's money, public services of public trust.
Speaker 7 (27:23):
As the district attorney correctly pointed out, the vast majority
of the county workforce works tirelessly to represent and assist
some of the most vulnerable people in our population, and
we all deserve and should expect a government that is
built on integrity.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
I want to send a warning to all county employees
for that very small sub section of greedy fraudsters.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
I will guarantee you we're coming after you.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Those two actually had a small orchestra behind them. That's
very nice. I think it was a social media video, yeah,
and posted. I guess so, I just uh, I get.
I've got the names of these people, the fraudsters, the fraudsters, yes,
uh allah Aga Agamalian thirty seven thousand dollars a la
(28:17):
stole according to the Feds.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
According to Nathan Hockman, rather.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
U Aurora Lopez Battista stole ninety three hundred according to
the DA Jessica Antonia Chandler forty eight nine hundred, Chandra
Comico Tisdale fifty seven thousand, Kelly Collins fifty six thousand.
(28:41):
Also Derek Anthony, Kalela, Donisha, Nicole Broomfeld, Ivan Jacob Mariskau
married Teresa Thomas, Raquel Martinez Alvarez, Shalita Violajamo, Tony Cheris.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Pittman, and Yini Aga Begian all criminals, says Nathan Hackman.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
And the state had such a bad or, I should say,
a non existent system of tracking whether somebody filing for
unemployment benefits was really unemployed. They couldn't even catch these
thirteen people who worked in government. These people were working
for the county while stealing state money. I don't think
(29:27):
it would have been hard to scour that database. And
it took them up to five years to catch some
of these people. Apparently public and private employers in La
lost ten billion dollars just in this county to fraud
from COVID ten billion. There's a lot of people when
(29:52):
you call county offices and the answer to the phone,
they're criminals. A lot of people you go up to
the desk. How can I help you? Criminals? That's that's
a big number. And you know what, I'm sorry. If
you're caught doing this once, I wonder how many other times,
(30:13):
because apparently most of the time, everybody.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Gets away with it. That's why.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
That's why although this wasn't his case, it wasn't a
federal case, it was a state case. This is Nathan Hawkman,
but Bill A. Sale is so important as the US
attorney because he's the one who's now uncovering all the
criminals involved in the homeless industry here in La See.
You get, you get, you get real tough investigators like
(30:42):
Assalian Hawkman. Life changes suddenly. There's dozens of people being
arraigned and charged. You know, a lot of these people
are going to go to jail. I mean it's like
a casino. All right, we come back Alex Stone from
ABC News and we're going to talk about Oh. Alaska
(31:06):
Airlines they they all their flights were grounded last night.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
I'm glad.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
I was gonna say a good thing. You weren't gone Alaska.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
Yeah, I know, I know, it was it was that
was I was. I was up for about twenty four
hours yesterday.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
I mean, you know, we scheduled this, but you don't
realize how tough it's going to be until you do it. Yeah,
and boy, they really don't serve food anymore on planes.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
You have to bring your own.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, I know. It was just you can just just
they don't care. You just die there in your seat.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Oh, I know, nobody cares about anything anymore.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
No, nobody does.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
No, we're on our own.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
That's you know what I keep telling people that.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
It's so true.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
You're nobody. Nobody cares about your problems. Nobody's going to
help you.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
Try being in a hospital.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Seriously, no, I know, we'll dever. Marcus Live in the
KFI twenty four hour Newsroom. Hey, you've been listening to
the John Cobalt Show podcast. You can always hear the
show live on KFI Am six forty from one to
four pm every Monday through Friday, and of course, anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio app
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John Kobylt
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