‘Baseless’ report led to mass recusal

An “untrue and unfounded” report that former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona had a romantic relationship with a top federal prosecutor forced government officials to disqualify about 250 federal attorneys from handling his case, lawyers disclosed in court Thursday.

All of the prosecutors assigned to the U.S. attorney’s offices in Los Angeles and Santa Ana have been prohibited from any involvement in the case -- except for two prosecutors who report directly to supervisors in Washington. Until now, officials had declined to publicly account for that unusual arrangement.

But at a hearing Thursday, a government lawyer disclosed that the arrangement was set up after an informant told FBI agents that Carona had said he had had an affair with Debra W. Yang, the former U.S. attorney for Los Angeles.

The allegation proved untrue, but the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles recused itself from the case to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. The two prosecutors assigned to the Carona case now report to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, Assistant U.S. Atty. Kenneth Julian said.

According to the FBI report, former Carona associate Joseph Cavallo told an investigator that former Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo told him that Carona had boasted of a relationship with Yang.

Carona lawyer Brian A. Sun said in court Thursday that the allegation was “demonstrably false.” He said the fact that the U.S. attorney’s office investigated and found the report to be untrue cast further doubt on the credibility of Cavallo and Jaramillo, both expected to be prosecution witnesses at Carona’s trial in October.

“We have consistently maintained that some of the government’s key witnesses are wholly lacking in credibility. The statements attributed to Mr. Jaramillo concerning Ms. Yang are a total fabrication,” Sun said in a statement. “We deeply regret that others must endure the indignity of false and malicious accusations by those seeking to curry favor with the prosecution.”

Yang served as the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles from 2002 until 2006. She left the office to work as a partner in the Los Angeles offices of law firm Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher. She issued a statement to The Times that said she worked with Carona when he was sheriff and their relationship was never personal.

“My dealings with Sheriff Carona were infrequent and purely professional. As a former senior law enforcement officer for seven counties, I met with him occasionally but much less frequently than most other heads of agencies,” she said in a statement to The Times earlier this year.

Julian and Assistant U.S. Atty. Brett Sagel, assigned to the U.S. attorney’s Orange County office, are the only two federal prosecutors allowed to work on the Carona case.

“We’ve been aware of the statement made by Mr. Carona for some time. We’ve investigated his claim and determined that it’s baseless,” said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

The decision to disqualify the office was not unprecedented. In the 1990s, the U.S. attorney’s Phoenix office recused itself from the bank fraud prosecution of then-Arizona Gov. Fife Symington because of a perceived conflict of interest. The U.S. attorney’s Los Angeles office prosecuted Symington, whose conviction was reversed on appeal. Before the case could be retried, President Clinton pardoned Symington.

Prosecutors charged Carona in October under a broad corruption indictment that accused him of exchanging the power of his office for tens of thousands of dollars in cash and expensive gifts.

Carona retired in January, a move that allowed him to accept the donated legal services of Jones Day, one of the top law firms in the country.

--

stuart.pfeifer@latimes.com