A reminder of the Scott Markowitz perjury scandal, an effort to create a phony Republican candidate to siphon votes away from Linda Whitaker – the only Republican in Fullerton’s 4th District election. We still don’t know who really collected the signatures Markowitz swore he did, not yet; but Fullerton Observer Diane Vena and other OC Democrat operatives do. Maybe even the DA knows who suborned Markowitz’s perjury and falsification of election documents.
Let’s hope this video hits the airways and cable ways soon.
I was watching the League of Women Voter’s candidate forum a few days ago and I couldn’t help but notice how the Fullerton Boohoo darlings, Jan Flory and Vivian Jaramillo, kept attacking the incumbents for their refusal to “listen to the people.” Well, okay politics.
It’s a total waste of money, but it sure is short…
The two examples cited were the idiotic Trail to Nowhere and the equally stupid Walk on Wilshire. Ironically, the former was approved unanimously by the City Council; and Council majorities have kept the latter, the money-losing and annoying “WoW” alive for years.
If I knew what I was talking about this wouldn’t be Fullerton!
The fact is that both of these wasteful and useless “projects’ were the brain children of bureaucrats in City Hall and became the vanity projects of the egregious Ahmad Zahra and the lamentable Shana Charles who were instrumental in both cases in getting people to show up and harass anybody who might be exercising common sense. And right there to create the news and also report on it were the Kennedy Sisters, Skaskia and Sharon, who saw nothing wrong with trying to intimidate downtown businesses in the case of the moronic Waste on Wilshire.
This sort of “public support” is not organic; it’s artificial, and that’s why it’s commonly referred to as Astroturfing. Hence the irony that the same people who ginned up the “support” are the ones braying to demand that the Fullerton City Council “listen to the people.”
Well, irony isn’t the strong suit of people like Flory and Jaramillo. Neither is honesty. But self-serving sanctimony is.
Let them eat dog!
When the the idea of legalizing marijuana dispensaries in Fullerton came to the City Council in 2019, public speaker after public speaker, in English and Spanish denounced the idea as bad for Fullerton. The percentage must have been 30 to 1 against dispensaries. And where was Jan Flory, defender of the untermenschen? That’s right. She was voting to permit dispensaries in the closing months of 2019 – before the election that would usher in a new, anti-dispensary Council majority.
When the new Council revoked the Flory-Zahra-QuirkSilva dope ordinance and the vast majority again being in favor of disallowing dispensaries, guess who was there. Cannabis Kitty Jaramillo, that’s who, the enthusiastic marijuana advocate who proclaimed dispensaries were “right for Fullerton.”
Amazing how these twin pillars of public advocacy had no such interest in overwhelming public opinion when it came to legalized dope and it didn’t suit their ambitions; a public opinion, by the way, that was not ginned up by City bureaucrats, politicians or brain-dying ideologues, but that represented genuine public sentiment.
Last week the wretched waste known as “Walk-on-Wilshire” was extended another three months – to the end of January, 2025.
At the City Council meeting a cavalcade of comedy ended with a fun twist. More on that in a bit.
Hitchhiking to the airport…
Right out of the gate we learned from Ahmad Zahra that he had to jet away that very evening for parts unknown because of his “day job” as a “producer.” He didn’t elaborate on what he produces; or where or how or what. But he also says he’s a doctor and the faithful believe. Cynical people think that his plagiarizing gig at the OC Water District was his first paying job.
Any how he admonished the crowd he helped manipulated to be there, to exercise brevity. They didn’t.
What you see depends on where you stand
Of course Fullerton BooHoo was fully mobilized to defend the idiotic and continue spilling disinformation all over downtown. Listening to these uninformed nitwits you’d get the idea that a botanical garden had sprung up in the 100 block of West Wilshire, a veritable garden spot in an endless plain of burning sulphur.
It was brutal to listen to the whole damn thing. Jesus H. Christ, what utter nonsense.
It was fun the hear our old pal Diane Vena pontificate; I would have been hard pressed not to ask her about her role in the Scott Markowitz perjury conviction, but that’s another story.
In the end Shana Charles, the boobish mastermind behind this boondoggle made a motion – the usual temporizing – more study needed to make the Wilt of Wilshire permanent; and also to apply the same study to the rest of the block – all the way to Malden Avenue.
Then the fun started. The Mayor-pro-tem, Fred Jung intervened with a “friendly” amendment to the motion. Half-measures were wrong if Fullerton was going to do this thing, said Jung, and he proposed dumping the existing couple hundred feet as part of future study and go for the whole enchilada – the other 400 feet to Malden.
The public health doctor is in…
Doctor Charles got giddy. And greedy. In her haste to promote her hobby horse, the PhD of Public Health agreed and the motion passed 3-1, Whitaker voting no and Dunlap abstaining. Some Fullerton boohoos rejoiced, but they rejoiced too soon. Why?
Because now staff has direction to address only the entire block as relevant.
Closing the entire 100 block of West Wilshire block is a much different animal than the keeping the existing 200 feet that the City has nursed along with temporary extensions and the comical phrase “pilot program.” Much different indeed. Closing the street would entail cutting off a dozen commercial businesses on the south side of the street from direct auto access; another half dozen offices on the north side would be cut off, too.
The Villa del Sol parking lot, and the east end of the Promenade parking structure could only be reached via a narrow alley off of Whiting, itself a traffic restricted street at Harbor Booulevard.
At least 35 parking spaces would be lost or made useless.
Some businesses would actually no longer have useful street addresses if the street were to disappear.
In short, the Jung Amendment was a non-starter, a rather creative effort to stall the issue, and force a new council majority, if there is one, to start over again in February.
It was entertaining to see Charles go for this. Perhaps she could see the Jungian end run and decided that she needed the three votes to keep it alive, so she went along with it. If so she must be counting on Vivian Jaramillo to win in District 4.
According to the OC Register, phony 4th District candidate, Scott Markowitz pleaded guilty yesterday. In exchange for the plea Markowitz gets a day in jail, probation and a month of community service. Felony charges are dismissed by DA Todd Spitzer.
I’ve never seen the wheels of justice grind out a product so quickly.
But what is the product?
As FFFF writers and commenters have noted, Markowitz’s fate was largely irrelevant given that the whole thing was orchestrated by others connected to the cause of electing Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, including politicians and Democrat operatives.
Since prosecutors are not given to giving anything away I think we can speculate that Markowitz named a name. Or two. We may surmise, I think, that the investigation into who set Markowitz up in the first place is ongoing. On the other hand this sort of case is probably perceived by the DA as a hassle without a lot of glamor and some potential political pushback from Dems he needs in a non-partisan election.
As to Markowitz, maybe we can let the poor sap get on with his life, free of the encumbrance of a felony rap.
Friends will recall that Diane Vena, one of Fullerton Boohoo’s charter members and a standout Observer and City Hall nuisance, became (in)famous for having signed the nominating papers of the dummy candidate Scott Markowitz, who has been charged by the DA with perjury and falsification of official records. Those are felonies.
Someone calling him/herself “Diane Vena” left a comment on FFFF. Was it the real Diane Vena?
I’m inclined to think so. Why? Because the comment is so nonsensical in true Observer fashion. Hmm. Here it is:
Let’s parse it out, shall we?
Poor Diane doesn’t seem interested in clearing anything up. She says “they came.” Who came? One person, two people? What are their names, Diane? I mean jeez, if you committed no crime (and no one claims that you did) then what’s the big mystery? Did you know the circulators? Were they friends? Was it Aaruni Thakur? Was it Ahmad Zahra? Was it Ajay Mohan? C’mon, Diane name names.
Diane,you volunteered the information that you re-signed the papers because the first one “got lost.” Now that’s just weird. Did the same non-Markowitz person(s) show up at your door? This could be interesting if the mystery circulator suborned perjury twice with you, poor, innocent Diane.
Diane, you inform us that you signed the papers “willingly,” suggesting that you knew the non-Markowitz circulator(s). Well, of course you signed willingly. Nobody ever thought you were coerced, so that statement is weird, too. But did you know that Markowitz was going to submit a MAGA ballot statement? Were you in on the plan to siphon conservative voters away from Linda Whitaker? That does make sense since you had previously endorsed Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo. Not a crime, but unethical as Hell.
Patsy Markowitz. Left holding the empty bag.
But back to the crime part. Somebody got Scott Markowitz to commit perjury. And suborning perjury is a crime. So is participating in a conspiracy to do so.
Well, don’t worry yourself Diane. Sooner or later the truth will out, as they say. And then we’ll know who’s who in Team Jaramillo’s zoo.
And Diane, if this comment was not left by you please let me know. In any case, you still need to answer the questions posed above.
We don’t know our cloaca from a hole in the ground.
A few weeks back, the febrile publisher of the yellowing and brittle Fullerton Observer wrote a story about your “rights.” Those rights, specifically being not to have to look at campaign signs on public property. She even went so far as to explain how to get City employees to get rid of them, a backhanded way of saying, perhaps, that those employees didn’t already have enough to do.
The anointing oil was greasy and left fingerprints…
Of course the target of Ms. Saskia Kennedy was Fred Jung and his protégé, 4th District candidate Jamie Valencia, who had the temerity to run against the Dem Central Anointed One, Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo. Jaramillo, of course, wasn’t mentioned.
Tools for sale…
One of our best Friends just sent in these photos of Jaramillo signs, nailed to Southern California Edison power poles – and act that ist sehr verboten. Everybody in the political campaign business – Team Jaramillo included – knows this.
Plus, that’s a real bad look for a former “Neighborhood Preservation Officer.”
Those pesky Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform are at it again, updating their previous introduction of Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo to reflect the fact that the stooge candidate created by her team to draw votes away from her opponent Linda Whitaker is now charged with perjury and got hauled off the the Santa Ana Jail a few days ago. Busted.
Poor patsy Scott Markowitz, the stooge in question is facing two felonies while the identity of his manipulators remains a secret. For now.
However we do know the name of the one and only beneficiary of Markowitz and his MAGA ballot statement: Vivian Jaramillo who disingenuously referred to Markowitz as her “opponent.” No, we meant to be an ally in her election and of course she knows it.
Meantime, Republican Central had this to say about the Markowitz Scandal, laying out some facts, and teeing up additional questions.
“Markowitz was a registered Democrat, who switched parties before submitting fraudulent nomination documents hours before filing then proceeded to campaign as a ‘MAGA Republican’ to split the vote away from our only endorsed Republican and help the lone Democrat in the race,” the statement read.
The OC Republicans know all about this bad behavior. They did it in 1995 and the scandal drew in Curt Pringle, Scott Baugh, Dana Rohrabacher and some of their underlings.
From an LA Times OC article, I harvested this gem of a response to the Scott Markowitz arrest and perjury charges:
“I agree with DA Spitzer that voters must have total confidence that every election is being carried out in a fair and unbiased manner,” she said in a statement. “I welcome their investigation into the alleged actions of my opponent and we will continue to run a positive campaign focused on the issues that matter to South Fullerton residents.”
The forced smile may not last…
And who agrees with DA Sptizer? Why, none other than Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, who remains the only beneficiary of the fraudulent, election rigging campaign of Scott Markowitz and his accomplices.
Notice how Jaramillo disingenuously refers to Markowitz as her “opponent,” as if he were and ever was a real candidate. This line was fed to her by a campaign consultant to create distance between Jaramillo and Markowitz. It may not work. One of her endorsers is Diane Vena who also signed Markowitz’s papers. And Markowitz was guided by Ajay Mohan, a Democrat Party operative. He obviously acted in concert with others, and no mangling of language or logic is going to change that.
Notice also how she also uses the present tense to describe the DA’s investigation. It’s not over Kitty, and some of your team, maybe even you, may end up implicated in the collusion to commit a crime. That’s a crime, too.
Phony Fullerton 4th District candidate Scott Markowitz has been arrested by the DA and charged with perjury and falsification of public documents. Somebody other than Markowitz circulated his nominating papers, but he attested that he did.
Normally, in these types of situations that would be the end of the story. Except that in the case of Markowitz – a political unknown – he had help. How much coaching he got, and by whom, remains something of a mystery, but it’s obvious that his perjury was suborned by others.
I’d sell out my own mother for 10 votes, and I have…
We do know that one of his manipulators is the former Executive Director of the OC Democrat Party, one Ajay Mohan who accompanied Markowitz to the City Clerk’s office to pull papers. Was Mohan the circulator? Was it somebody else, somebody that the nominators trusted? Who wrote the carefully crafted and cynical MAGA statement Markowitz got on the ballot? Certainly not Markowitz.
Happy Jaramillo…
Who else may have benefitted from the scam will give us a clue to the extent of the election rigging. Vivian Jaramillo is the number one suspect since Markowitz’s candidacy was meant to attract non-Latino voters from Linda Whitaker.
I will get what I want, one way or another…
One layer deeper, we can discern the shadowy figure of Ahmad Zahra, Fullerton’s 5th District representative who desperately needs Jaramillo’s support to finally become America’s first gay, Arab, Muslim Mayor; and who also needs Jaramillo to finally bring home the marijuana dispensary bacon.
Then there’s Ada Briceno, the current Chairwoman of the OC Democrat Party, the group that endorsed Jaramillo without even talking to anybody else. There’s a big prestige issue here, the ambitious Briceno has a record – she was certainly aware of the Tony Castro scandal in 2022, when her ED Mohan created the fake Latino candidate in Fullerton’s 5th District to protect the egregious Ahmad Zahra.
Slithering things…
The name Aaruni Thakur has also been mentioned, in the comments section below. He deserves special attention. Apparently his family lives and owns property on Wooodcrest, not far from the abode of Scott Markowitz. He and his family have given a lot of money to Jaramillo, and his previous fake carpetbaggery in the 4th District in 2020 gives a fine example of his moral compass.
Above the lowly riffraff are politicians who have invested their political prestige in Jaramillo’s candidacy and who may want to protect that investment while also creating office holders beholden to them. These include Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk, State Senator Josh Newman, and Congressman Lou Correa. How shallow or how deep are the roots of the Markowitz Conspiracy?
Bushala says stop!
All of these issues are presented as a prelude to the topic of this post, which is a letter from Fullerton activist, Tony Bushala to the District Attorney Todd Spitzer asking that the investigation into the situation be continued to find out who got Markowitz to lie.
It’s very clear that at least one other person was involved in suborning perjury. One would have to be relentlessly stupid, a Kennedy Observer, in fact, to believe that Markowitz the political novice, himself was the sole director of this play; that he cooked up the plan; that he decided to create a campaign committee for appearances; that he decided to change his party affiliation; that he that he made sure his new affiliation was on his FPCC documents when it wasn’t required; that he, for some reason, needed and recruited a surrogate to circulate his petition; that he conceived and wrote his ballot statement; that he knew nothing else was required and quietly disappeared, his apologists at the Observer saying he was somehow “threatened” into hiding.
There is an old Latin apothegm: qui bono? Roughly translated the question asks “who benefits” from a given situation whose origins may not be completely clear. Well, let’s find out.
As FFFF has continually claimed, Markowitz was a set-up candidate, created by prominent Democrats to draw votes away from Linda Whitaker to help her opponent, Vivian Jaramillo.
I’d sell out my mother for 10 votes, and I have…
Apparently, Markowitz’s nominating signatures were collected by somebody else, but he signed the affidavit claiming he did. That’s perjury, and substantiates our conclusions about the rest of the sordid scheme.
Perjury is a felony, and whoever set him up for this had better hope that Markowitz is willing to keep his mouth shut. If he sings he may very well incriminate the people who dragged him into this perjury, in which case we would have a conspiracy to commit a crime, which is also a felony.
Another DA investigation…
Democrat Ajay Mohan is in this up to his eyeballs, of course. What about others? I keep hearing the names Ahmad Zahra and Aaruni Thakur, Ada Briceno and even Congressman Lou Correa.
On a clear day you can see forever…
Did Fullerton Observer Diane Vena know about this? She seems to have concocted tales to tell the gullible about the details of her participation. What about any of the other nominators? What about the Fullerton Observer itself, that has studiously avoided any mention of the perjury scandal.
The immediate question is what impact this will have on the 4th District election. Mass circulated campaign material has already tied Markowitz as a set up to help Jaramillo, so this is just more ammunition for the next couple of weeks. The beneficiaries of this news are obviously Linda Whitaker and Jamie Valencia, the former of which can point to the conspiracy as evidence of her own election chances.
