Former Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu has agreed to plead guilty to federal charges in connection with his push to sell Angel Stadium, including lying to FBI agents about not expecting to receive anything from the Angels when the transaction closed — he allegedly hoped to get a $1-million campaign contribution — and destroying an email in which he provided confidential information to the team about the city’s negotiations.
The plea agreement filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana offers an extraordinary look inside Sidhu’s efforts to sell the stadium to a company controlled by the Angels’ owner for $320 million. A mock City Council meeting was scheduled in advance of the sale to rehearse talking points, the plea agreement said, that was to include Sidhu, two unnamed City Council members, an Angels consultant, the team president, a team attorney and the then-president of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce.
An email setting the agenda for a mock council meeting scheduled to take place Sept. 21, 2020, laid out a detailed plan and noted: “[Angels] team available to help develop ‘zingers,’ responses and other points to improve performance.” Sidhu was to play himself and “He is expected to be a strong defender of the deal and know its terms, at least at the policy level, well.”
Sidhu, who resigned last year amid a flurry of controversy about the since-scuttled stadium deal, will plead guilty to obstruction of justice, wire fraud and two counts of making false statements. The plea agreement doesn’t allege wrongdoing by the Angels.
The sprawling public corruption investigation first became public in May 2022 when an Orange County Superior Court judge granted the state attorney general’s request to halt the sale of Angel Stadium and surrounding parking lots to the company controlled by Angels owner Arte Moreno.
The attorney general’s request included an affidavit for a federal search warrant completed by FBI Special Agent Brian Adkins alleging Sidhu, then the mayor, “illustrated his intent to solicit campaign contributions, in the amount of $1,000,000 … in exchange for performing official acts intended to finalize the stadium sale for the Angels.”
During a meeting in December 2021 secretly recorded by former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce President Todd Ament for the FBI, the mayor discussed his upcoming reelection bid as well as the Angels: “We’ll push for them at least have a million dollars. You know, for [Angels Representative 1] to say ‘no’ is bad.”
In a January 2022 conversation covertly recorded by the FBI, Sihdu repeated the million-dollar figure: “Because I am hoping to get at least a million … I’m going to be pushing for it. [Angels representative] actually asked me. He said, ‘What can I do for your election?’ I said, ‘Let me finish your deal first, and then we’ll talk about that.’”
When FBI agents interviewed Sidhu on May 12, 2022, the plea agreement said, he “falsely stated” that he expected “nothing” from the Angels after the stadium deal was completed, that he did not conduct city business from his personal email and that “he did not recall ever providing information about the Stadium sale to the Angels consultant during negotiations over that sale.”
“Defendant knowingly and willfully made these false statements with knowledge both that the statements were untrue and that his conduct was unlawful,” the plea agreement said.
Though it doesn’t identify the Angels consultant by name, details in the agreement and an FBI affidavit filed last year match prominent local lobbyist Jeff Flint.
The plea agreement said Sidhu destroyed emails related to the stadium sale. They include one sent from a personal email account to the Angels consultant and the former head of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce in July 2020 which had an attached document with “confidential negotiation information related to the potential sale of the stadium, discussion of issues related to price and other terms of the sale.”
“Defendant was using the Angels consultant and [the former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce president] to provide that confidential inside information to the Angels so that the Angels could use that information in the negotiations with the City to purchase Angel Stadium on terms beneficial to the Angels,” the plea agreement said.
The agreement marks the latest chapter in a sprawling federal corruption investigation that pulled back the curtain on a self-described “cabal” that federal officials allege tightly controlled the city government. Leaders of the secretive group include the former head of the city’s Chamber of Commerce, a political consultant and, “to some extent,” Disneyland’s director of external affairs, according to federal affidavits.
The former Chamber of Commerce president, Ament, cooperated with authorities and pleaded guilty last year to multiple felonies, including wire fraud, making a false statement to a financial institution and subscribing to a false tax return. Melahat Rafiei, a former state Democratic party official and campaign consultant, pleaded guilty in April to one count of attempted wire fraud. Neither has been sentenced.
