Best Of - LAHSA Federal Investigation (09/07)

0:00This is an I heart podcast guaranteed human. Can't find am six 40 you're listening to the John Cobalt podcast on the I heart radio. It's the John Cobalt show. We are on from three to six every day after six o'clock John Cobalt show on demand on the I heart app. That's the podcast to where you could listen to what you missed. And we are going to talk in just a moment, Lusio Piro. He's an attorney defense attorney here in Southern California. The Lindsey Clancy murder trial is over and she's neither guilty nor not guilty. It was a hung jury 11 to one in favor of not guilty by reasons of insanity. But one heroic juror, a man stood up to the mob and said, no, she's guilty. She murdered her three children. Five, three and eight months exercise band around their little necks.

1:01Strangled all three of them face down on the floor in the basement. First sent her husband out to do errands. Then did the murders and then realizing what she had done. She threw herself out a window after trying to cut her neck and wrists. And she didn't kill herself. She paralyzed herself for the rest of her life with spinal injury. But the number of crazed women out in the street screaming for her and the defense attorney also crazed. Very angry with this one juror stood up, claiming he didn't understand or refused to consider reasonable doubt. Well, maybe he didn't have reasonable doubt. Yes. I mean, I did understand if you don't have to have reasonable doubt. And what's the reasonable doubt? Nobody disputed that she she struggled them.

2:08Let's get Lucia Piran. Lou, how are you? Hey, good to be back with you, man. Thanks for saving me for the big ones. Yeah. No, this is this is a heavy one. I this one makes me crazy. Well, tell me what you thought of the verdict here. And then we'll get to some of the details. What was your overall reaction? Well, me, me and you are very much alike. And I'll tell you this. When you first heard about this case, when it started out, you hear a woman killed her three kids. You think right away. There's no way she's getting out of this. Come on. Like no way, right? But then as the trial went, the court public opinion, and you hear the experts and you start hearing this sort of wave of like, no, no, there's more to the story. She didn't just kill her kids, but she was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis. And people started talking about what that is and how common it is and what it can do to somebody. And then he's, he learned the trial that she committed, you know, attempted suicide through herself herself out of window is paralyzed from the waist down.

3:12You start looking at now you start looking at her on on TV, right? Or watching on video, see looking at this person with the pills on the table. And you start feeling bad for her. I did. And then what happened? Sorry. I did not. Well, apparently she, she terrifying. But you did. You know what I saw? I saw crazy eyes. And I saw a woman who murdered, willfully murdered. She wasn't overtaken by some supernatural force. This is not like some horror movie. This is her making a decision because she center has been out. And then she tried to kill herself afterwards. That's obvious knowledge that what she did was horrifically wrong. Why am I wrong? Well, so because here's why you're not necessarily wrong. It's a subjective test. That's why it's difficult for two people to agree on this. Because two people can look at this and another person could say, well,

4:13maybe she didn't appreciate the difference between right and wrong throughout that entire time. That it was a different person. That's what her attorney argued. The person sitting in court now was not the person who did all these things. The internet searches and sending their husband out. And that was a different person. There was a second wife. By waiting. I love all this rhetoric from the attorneys. It wasn't another woman. There wasn't a second wife there. It wasn't an operation. It was hard. It was the same woman. It was mom. Wow. For argument on this issue. And clearly you had 11 jurors who said, I don't think she knew the difference between right and wrong when she did all this. And I remember they're sitting in the room for seven weeks looking at this woman in a wheelchair who can't move from the waist down. Who's crying in the middle of testimony. That's irrelevant. It's a lot. That's a relative. Yeah, but she heard herself out the window. Because she knew what she did was wrong.

5:13And she was ashamed and mortified by it. All right. Look, that's what there is a lot of people who agree with you as well. But as you can see, if you were to pull your call, your friends or family around the dinner table tonight and start talking about it, you'll get different points. And it's because it's a subjective test. Not objective is do you think as a juror sitting there that she knew the difference between right and wrong? If you don't think she did, it's not guilty by reason of insanity. That's how you got 11 of them. But is there some kind of mass psychosis, some mass frenzy among the nine women? Like do they have their own mental illness? Because I'm seeing hundreds of women dressed in pink cheering on this child killer, this triple child killer. And I'm thinking that is some kind of mass contagion. This is like social madness. This is Salem witch trial stuff. And that could happen in the room. And after after seven weeks, could they all have fed off each other's insanity and created like an alternate reality?

6:18Like a reverse mob. Usually the mob whips themselves into a frenzy to kill a bad guy here. They whip themselves in the frenzy to protect this woman. Yeah, I don't think Reddington would have kept you on the jury. Oh, yeah, see? But I'll tell you one thing that maybe some of your frustration should go towards a prosecution. Here's why I think they overplayed their hand. Their theory that she fabricated the suicide attempt. I don't think played well with the jury, right? They could have argued that she, her suicide attempt was real because of your reason, because she felt so guilty for what she did. But that's not what they argued. They argued this always one big cover up. She wanted to kill the kids. And then she made some light scratches on her neck and on her wrist and then tried to fly down the wall out of the window. Not, but then it went away, it went awry on her. It didn't go the way she planned it. So that's why she's paralyzed.

7:20That wasn't the, that wasn't the right play. She should have embraced the fact like what you're saying. That would have probably been something that landed a little bit better with the jury. But who knows? They were sitting there in that room and we weren't. I think when you sit in that room, it's a lot different than watching replays and hearing reports and so forth. There's a clip here. I want to play it's 30 seconds and it's the Plymouth County DA Tim Cruz, the prosecutor being asked by a reporter about the sensitivity of the prosecution. Play the clip. Would you cut one? DA, do you know I'm not going to stand out here and listen to this? DA Cruz, you had 11 jurors that didn't necessarily believe your case. What do you say to those people who felt that the whole prosecution was incensitive? What's what? Incensative. Incensative. Incensative is killing three children. Incensative is ignoring those facts. We have an obligation to stand up for those people and see justice and make sure they defend it gets justice and make sure they get justice. So if people can't understand that, I don't know how I can answer that question. To me, we're in an alternate universe where everything is inside out and upside down.

8:23Incensative is Cruz laying out the case, which was true. Nobody was denying that she did it. She didn't deny it. The defense attorney didn't deny it. It's incensitive to point out that she murdered the kids. And this is from journalists. What kind of insanity is this here? Look, it depends if you want to look at the cause or the effect. The effect everybody will agree is horrific. And the victims here clearly are these three kids who are no longer with us. But if you just look at the effect and not the cause, right, that's not the whole story. And the other side is what caused this. And I think that's where there's more of a dispute in terms of how we got to this point. But the crime is about what you do. When did the crime become about why you did it? It's what you do. I don't care why she did it, whether she had a mental illness or not. All that matters is those three kids are dead.

9:26This is like, this is the stuff Oprah started. Of course, it's awful. I mean, nobody can even put this tragedy into context. You can't even begin to explain it. But the law is pretty clear that you have to have an act and a mental state at the same time to have a conviction. And the act is there. What you're saying is correct. The act of killing was there. But with the mental state there, that's where there's more of an issue in a dispute. And that's why the 11 to 1 for not guilty by reason of insanity. Yeah, I talked with Roy Oakes. The ABC analyst a lot about this. insanity stuff. We've been talking recently about the Nick Reiner case. But isn't that when you really have a psychotic break where you don't realize that you're actually choking children, you think you're choking a stuffed animal or you're stabbing a pumpkin and not an actual human being where you're you're you're you're you're you're think you're being chased by by by demons. And when he completely lost touch with the with the material world and then he was touched with the material world. And now you're in some corner, some kind of sick fantasy zone.

10:27That wasn't her. Well, okay, so the key point that the defense made on this issue, I think, was what mother kills her own three kids. The fact that a mother killed her own three kids, the way she did only can be explained by someone who is not in the right state of mind. And I think a lot of people can identify with that versus to someone killing somebody else or a stranger or a friend or someone that they're not really, but a mother to kill her own kids. The default response is something must have not been right with her at that time because that's not the way society works. That's not our natural way. So I think that also was a big advantage when we bite the overlooking and can be distinguished from other cases that you're rightfully bringing up. All right, listen, it's good having you on again. Thank you. Thanks for taking the time. Hey, always fun debating with you. All right, more coming up. You're listening to John Cobalt on demand from KFI AM640. KFI AM640 live everywhere on the I heart radio app.

11:34John Cobalt show on KFI AM640 more stimulating talk radio. And we will be with you from three to six. As always, after six o'clock, whatever you missed, you get on the podcast. John Cobalt show on demand. We get some good stuff here because the Trump administration announced a federal investigation into Los Angeles homeless services authority. It wants to investigate the waste, fraud and abuse of federal money. They've already cut off federal money and the money that has gone to Los over the past few years has produced nothing good. But this is even better. Carried bass. Got a letter telling her to come and testify before Congress on September 15th. He got it from she got it from the congressman Tim Burchette chairman of the House subcommittee

12:36on delivering government efficiency. She's supposed to show up at 11 a.m. on September 15th. And Burchette wants bass to bring documents and all communications connected to corrupt contracting and grant making by loss. And to be ready to discuss allegations of self enrichment among the nonprofits to whom Lassa has been awarding funds. It's everything we've been telling you about for years. It's real. It's cost billions of dollars of your tax money. I it's incredible how ignorant much of the public is because they keep voting for these tax increases. I have the letter here copy of the letter. The honorable Karen Bass mayor, city of Los Angeles, dear mayor bass. The subcommittee on delivering government efficiency is investigating potential waste fraud and abuse to Fred old grant funding.

13:38And I'll just skip around here. Lassa has received over $1 billion in federal funds since 2021. 220 million in 2024 alone. The housing and urban development inspector general is investigating Lassa's use of federal funds because of evidence of get this quote repeated false statements and its irresponsible actions and failures, including its lack of financial management, internal controls and safeguards against conflict of interest. By the way, none of that happens by accident. All of that has been a choice of the people who run Lassa because they're stealing the money and they're giving it to their friends and associates who run the nonprofits. And everybody in the chain, including Karen Bass, knows that the money is not going to do

14:41any good for the vagrants, drug addicts and mental patients laying in the streets. The system is not intended to do anybody good. This system is intended to enrich these people by taking your tax money. Period. It's not meant to help anyone. Every person in government, here in LA and in Sacramento, knows that this is a complete utter racket. It's a criminal organization. Lassa is a criminal organization. The people in Lassa, many of them are actual criminals. And finally now, I'm waiting for this. Federal government is going to investigate it in many different ways. The Department of Justice, Bill Asale, who is the first assistant US attorney here for the Central District Federal Prosecutor. He's investigating it from his end.

15:44You also have the Inspector General in Washington investigating it. Now you've got this subcommittee in the House of Representatives investigating it. And he goes on to write, well, we know in June of 2026, housing and urban development suspended further federal funding. Los Angeles officials have not adequately protected federal taxpayer dollars. It appears that many nonprofits to which these funds have been allocated are not using them for their intended purpose. He writes further to bass to understand the extent of the problem and the steps being taken to safeguard federal funds. We request certain documents and information and your testimony at a public hearing before the subcommittee on September 15th. Homelessness in California, he writes is a longstanding problem most notoriously in the Skidrow area of downtown Los Angeles, which of course produced thousands of fake votes for Nithia

16:48Rahman, who has her own key role in funneling money to this criminal organization, Lassa. That's my part. Back to the committee's letter, this problem has grown worse during your tenure as mayor. Your administration continues to pursue housing first and harm reduction policies that fail to address the mental health and drug abuse crises perpetuating the cycle of homelessness. The result is deteriorating public health, increased lawlessness and a bleak environment for small businesses. You want to hear these statistics? According to annual data from HUD, California has 182,000 homeless people. L.A. County, 73,000 of them, city of L.A., 45,000 of them, and it's increasing. And the mayor Los Angeles and the L.A. City Council appoint half of Lassa's governing board

17:51and the L.A. County Board of Supervisors appoint one member each, each member of the board. Now the county is pulling out of this criminal catastrophe. The county shared joint responsibility for oversight of federal funds. Again, the city council is populated by criminals. They are cones conspirators in this massive theft. The L.A. County supervisors, co-conspirators, pursuing. And as far as I'm concerned, the council people who are not involved and not speaking publicly about it, silence is violence. The borough of a black lives matter phrase. Silence is violence. If you're on the council, you're a supervisor. You're in the bureaucracy. You know what's going on. If you don't speak out on it, then you're part of it. You're part of the criminal conspiracy. And maybe you'll be an unindicted co-conspirator when federal charges are finally levied.

18:52And when we come back, I'm going to tell you it because they highlighted actually my favorite scam, including several other scams. But many of these scams reported by the California Post. None of them reported by the progressive minis at the Los Angeles Times. And the people at the L.A. Times should be co-conspirators too. They ought to be named in the indictment because their obligation as journalists was to investigate and uncover this and tell the public before we voted ourselves more tax increases. And I'm not going to be talking about it coming up. You're listening to John Cobalt on demand from KFI AM640. John Cobalt show KFI AM640. We're stimulating talk radio. And we are on from three until six. Now we're in the middle of telling you this should be good. Well, how's she going to wheeze a lot of this stuff? Her bass is being asked to testify before the subcommittee on delivering government efficiency.

19:57The hearing September 15th, 11 a.m. Room 2154 of the Rayburn House office building in Washington. She likes taking plane trips. I mean, it's not it's not Ghana. It's not Obama's cocktail party. But yeah, it's a trip to Washington. She served there for 10 years. And the title of the public public hearing is fixing fraud and failure in federally funded homeless services. That is nice alliteration. There are five f's fixing fraud and failure in federally funded homeless services. And Los Angeles is the centerpiece of government homelessness fraud. Absolutely. This is Hall of Fame level criminal activity. And they in the letter they listed this kind of some of the greatest hits.

21:00This story we talked about quite a bit. And this this was exposed by L.A. And this is the best. When public radio is telling you your wasting money, that says something. It was a 2.1 million dollar contract signed by the CEO of Lossa. Felicia Adams-Kellum. That's one person. One of Bass's close friends. Bass put her her cronies in charge of not only Lossa, but the DWP, Denise Cunonias. And they've turned out to be either incredibly corrupt or stupid or both. Well this Felicia Adams-Kellum is a piece of work. She took a 2 million dollar contract and gave it to upward bound house.

22:06Which is one of these nonprofits that supposedly deals with the homeless. It's her husband's employer. She gave 2 million dollars to an organization that he has a high position in. Kellum had previously told L.A. that she had recused herself from anything involving her husband's employer. But they did an investigation to the public records show that Adams-Kellum personally authorized the contract. That's her signature. Then she said, well the contract had inadvertently ended up in front of her. And I guess her, she was overtaken by Satan and was forced to sign this in reaching her husband's employer with 2 million bucks. This is the quality of corruption we're dealing with. She actually denies doing it until a news organization, not the L.A. Times, produced the contract.

23:11Oh yeah, that was me. Well, that was inadvertent. Have you ever signed an inadvertent 2 million dollar contract that enriched your husband or wife? Has that ever happened? Also, this subcommittee cited reporting about the 1736 Family Crisis Center. This is a California post story, not the Los Angeles Times, which has received more than 36 million dollars in federal grants. I have to correct myself. This was the L.A. Times. I has received more than 36 million dollars in federal grants. 25 million from Los in the last five years. Remember this story? The organization CEO, Carol Adelkoff, gave herself a million six in two years. And the caper was this Adelkoff lady is living in Hawaii the whole time.

24:17So she squeezed $25 million at a loss, a $36 million in federal grants lives out of Hawaii, supposedly helping homeless women who are suffering domestic abuse. And this was an L.A. Times. Adelkoff got 740,000 plus in 2024, 900,000 in 2023, 500,000 bonus. And you know what the median compensation of 16 comparable non-profits was, 160,000. She was getting 900,000. So they want to investigate specifically that. There's no other explanation.

25:21This is stealing. If they had burst into a bank and run out with this money, they'd be in prison for 20 years. But they did it. They did it the modern way. They explained they were helping homelessness. Anybody who criticized them, lacks compassion and sensitivity. Maybe you know, you're racist and homophobic to boot, you know, all that stuff. And you shot those things and use it as a shield. Now when Bass was called by a federal judge to explain over $2 billion in homeless money that was missing, she hired 15 lawyers, 11 of them with a major law firm, Thorough from were city attorneys to keep her from testifying, cost us a tremendous amount of money. Is she actually going to show up and answer these questions six weeks before the election? Well, I'll be exciting September 15th. More coming up.

26:21You're listening to John Cobalt on demand from KFI AM640. KFI AM640. More stimulating talk radio. John Cobalt show, we're on from three to six and so I got two stories on the same thing. And one is the federal government trying to put an end to this. And one is the state trying to put an end to this. You know what this is? Have you ever gone on a website to buy something? And you put it off and you get interrupted. Go back an hour later and the price is much higher. That has not happened to me. That has not? No. I was going to ask you because you purchase an unlimited amount online. No, I don't. By all your clothes online, you say. Not all. Well, it's a lot. Okay. So I wondered if you ever, you know, those expensive shoes, if you ever looked at them and few hours later went back and then suddenly, you know, instead of a thousand minutes.

27:23I've gone into a store and I've purchased something and then two or three days later, there's a price adjustment and I go get it. I go get the price adjustment when it's down. Yes. Yes. I'm not going to pay more when it's up. Well, here's what they're doing online. I'll give you an example because there's a lawsuit about it. Jet blue, a user went on jet blue, needed to go to a funeral. They looked at the website, left, came back, the price had risen $230 in a day. They complained to jet blue and it was recommended that the customer clear their browser history and try again. You know what? They track what websites you go to. So if you were looking up things related to a funeral and it seemed like you really needed to book this flight now and you didn't care about the price, they'll jack it up $230.

28:23Correct. They, they, uh, based on factors like their, your wealth, whether you are frugal or whether you like to spend, uh, whether you might be desperate for the ticket. It's called surveillance pricing. And so now the FTC has proposed a new enforcement policy and they have to disclose whether they use highly detailed personal information to set individual prices. Well, I, except they should just ban the practice. I believe I'm not going to read another 15 pages of legal ease in tiny type to let me know that this is what they do. I know what they do. If the price is going up by hundreds of dollars from your first visit to your second visit a couple hours later, then yeah, they scanned your, and now you have to go either go to another site or you have to clear browser history or start and start all over again.

29:26But if they have your account and they have a record of everything you've been accessing, you've been Googling other websites you've gone to. Because I've noticed that, especially, especially with airline pricing. If I go back a second or third time, so California lawmakers are debating a bill that would ban surveillance pricing, but they have to get it done. I think by tomorrow because tomorrow is the last day that this, see, this is the kind of stuff they ought to be doing because that, I mean, I was talking about that in our Incogni commercial. They, the last commercial I did was about you drive and your car reports everything you do when you suddenly speed, when you suddenly hit the brakes and sends it to the car company that manufactured your automobile and then that sold to data brokers. Well, this is the same stuff here.

30:27Everything you do is tracked. All that information becomes valuable. In this case, Jack Blue is using the information about this woman looking to make it to a funeral against her and jacking up the price by $230. And you got to go to court to stop it. And it says they're using the type of technology where they take our individual data. Acquired by the companies themselves or purchase through data brokers. This is according to Abby Stemlor, professor at Indiana University. So you know, you're now you could play the game too and then have your wife or your husband or your kid. Look up the price on their computer with their IP address or their account with the airline and see what you get. But why do you have to go through all that? Oh, this is this is not and then the same thing when you go to any side to my clothing,

31:29to my food, whatever it is. Ah, that's it and they must all be doing it because it looks like it's just another algorithm in the mass of algorithms that control and run our life. But this is this is bad. What is mucy? Mucy? Yeah. How do you how do you have some? It says one person complain that Amazon had swung the price of his favorite mucy from 34 to $54 in the space of a couple of days. That's that's some kind of food, isn't it? Well, I thought it was like a grainy cereal. Is it a cereal mucy? Mucy is that just like mucylex? What you use when you're constipated to move things along. That's mirror. Miral acts. Hang on. Okay, spell it again. I thought you'd know it was kind of weird health food. I thought you would know. Yes, I just said it. It's some kind of cereal. Uh, yes, it's a cold Swiss dish that has a common cereal that you can prepare with

32:32that cookie. I knew. I know that's why I brought it up to you. I know what your expertise is. The expertise is weird like tasteless food. Um, all right. This musically went from 34 to $54. How much cereal is guy buying? I have no idea. Isn't it 350 a box or something? I don't know who's. That's what threw me off when you gave the right. Maybe buying a tanker truck full here. Um, right now that's dirty. That's wrong. All right. Now here's an update from the KFI 24 hour newsroom. You've been listening to the John Kobel show podcast. You can always hear the show live on KFI AM640 from 3 to 6 p.m. every Monday through Friday. And of course, anytime on demand on the I heart radio. KFI AM640 more stimulating talk.