In California’s most guarded political cul-de-sac, where glossy progressive branding conceals backroom power trades, the Bonta empire has evolved from a cozy family consultancy into a full-scale influence machine. And like every machine built to consolidate power, it requires fuel. In this case: Sacramento-engineered cash pipelines, billionaire-backed nonprofits, and a donor ecosystem that reads less like civic participation and more like a criminal enterprise searching for a statute.
Our previous investigation unmasked the Bontas’ cozy husband-and-wife operation, campaign accounts ping-ponging funds, perks dressed up as “staff appreciation,” and a façade of social justice used as camouflage for old-school dynastic power. But the deeper we dig, the more it becomes clear: this isn’t a story about two elected officials. It’s a story about a syndicate. A syndicate that bankrolls the “right” candidates, buries the “wrong” investigations, and rewards loyalty with protection, all while laundering its influence through a maze of nonprofits and PACs headquartered neatly in Sacramento.
And the clearest proof of that racket? A modest, easily overlooked $12,569.18 donation from an outfit named Communities United Against Villanueva for Sheriff 2022, a political action committee whose sole mission was simple: remove LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva at any cost. That dollar figure isn’t random. It is a breadcrumb in a much larger trail linking Sacramento’s progressive donor class to LA County’s most explosive corruption scandal in a decade.
Zoom out and the players come into focus. Patty Quillin’s seven-figure checks. Liz Simons’ six-figure wiring. M. Quinn Delaney. Kaitlyn Krieger. Lynn Schusterman. Michael Novogratz. Spielberg and Capshaw. Nearly $2 million in maxed-out contributions,$9,000 a head, flowed into Rob Bonta’s campaign for attorney general, while his wife Mia’s Assembly war chest swelled with the same Sacramento return address labels. Smart Justice California Action Fund dumps in $250,000, then another $100,000. SEIU drops $100,000. Philanthropist-activists in Sacramento slip in their $50,000, $35,000, $20,000 offerings. A steady drip of reform-branded money that, when traced, lands squarely at the feet of the Bontas, and directly into the political kill shot aimed at Villanueva.
This is the part where the establishment wants you to tune out, so listen up.
Because when Villanueva’s deputies executed search warrants on September 14, 2022, at Metro, Peace Over Violence, the Office of Inspector General, and the private homes of Supervisor Sheila Kuehl and her longtime ally Patricia Giggans, the entire progressive fundraising ecosystem went into cardiac arrest. Here was the sheriff no one controlled digging into a multi-year no-bid contract scheme, millions in questionable Metro payments, and a nonprofit run by Kuehl’s best friend. And then came the moment that should have sent federal investigators sprinting: during a live broadcast, Kuehl brazenly admitted she’d been tipped off about the warrant by County Counsel Dawyn Harrison, who himself got the information from Inspector General Max Huntsman.
A pre-raid leak. A tainted warrant. A group chat of insiders scrambling to protect one of their own. In any functioning democracy, this becomes the investigative equivalent of a five-alarm fire.
But, California in 2022 was not functioning.
Within a day, LASD had evidence, texts and voicemails, directly implicating Harrison, Huntsman, and Kuehl’s chief of staff Lisa Mandel in the unlawful warning. Within a week, the entire operation was yanked out of LASD’s hands. Rob Bonta, whose campaign was fueled by the very network of donors protecting Kuehl and Giggans, declared the investigation too “questionable” to continue and commandeered it under the Department of Justice.
Think about the timing.
Smart Justice and SEIU are sending Sacramento cash south to tank Villanueva’s re-election. Mia Bonta is cashing dual $4,900 checks from Senator Sydney Kamlager-Dove, whose husband, attorney Austin Dove, represents Giggans in the criminal probe. Kamlager-Dove’s $9,800 rides alongside her endorsement of Mia’s Assembly run. The San Francisco Chronicle sounds the alarm in June 2021, calling the arrangement “legalized corruption.” The warnings go ignored.
Then, in September 2022, right as the Communities United PAC detonated its war chest, unleashing more than half a million dollars against Villanueva and billionaire power brokers Jeff Katzenberg and George Soros piled on with a combined $1.5 million to ensure that a sheriff willing to hold corrupt politicians accountable would never be re-elected—Rob Bonta appears on cue. With the elite donor class financing the takedown, Bonta swoops in, seizes the Kuehl investigation, and neutralizes the only law-enforcement official actually probing LA County’s entrenched corruption ecosystem.
By August 2024, Bonta quietly closes the probe. No charges. No accountability. No explanation.
State investigators confessed to LASD investigators that they were blocked from viewing the truckload of evidence seized during the search warrants. Bonta publicly claimed there was “insufficient evidence” – THAT WAS A LIE.
A perfect political hit job wrapped in the language of “oversight.”
The East Bay scandal followed the same trajectory as the Kuehl probe: serious allegations, powerful donors, overlapping political interests, and an Attorney General who always seemed to land on the side of the people writing the checks.
The through line is painfully obvious. The same Sacramento donors backing the Bontas were bankrolling the PACs that drowned Villanueva’s re-election bid. The same nonprofit networks writing checks for “justice reform” were funneling money into Oakland’s political apparatus. The same political families donating to Mia’s campaign were tied to Giggans’ defense. The same insiders hosting fundraisers for the Bontas were at the center of a federal bribery and blackmail case.
This wasn’t governance. It was orchestration.
And the public is the mark.
Villanueva was replaced. Kuehl was shielded. The Duong machine was allowed to thrive until the feds stepped in. And the Bontas, flush with PAC cash, billionaire backing, and carefully cultivated alliances, kept climbing.
The marble-hall mafia won another round.
When all the lines converge in the same Sacramento office suites and the same LA County power circles, that’s not politics. That’s a racket.
But the Bontas’ talent for slipping past real scrutiny doesn’t stop at the LA battlegrounds, they’ve been running the same playbook up north, deep in the East Bay’s corruption underbelly, where indictments, blackmail threats, and political favors swirl in the same smoky backrooms.
By May 2024, the federal probe detonated in Oakland: former Mayor Sheng Thao, her partner Andre Jones, and the Duong brothers, David and Andy, the power behind the modular housing firm Evolutionary Homes, slapped with charges for bribery, straw-donor laundering, and an entire ecosystem of illegal campaign cash. And sitting at the center of that explosion was a letter, dated May 9, from Evolutionary Homes founder Mario Juarez, alleged “Co-Conspirator #1”, hand-delivered straight to Attorney General Rob Bonta.
Juarez wasn’t just any insider. He had hosted Bonta family fundraisers out of his Oakland office. He knew the terrain, the players, and the whispers. And his message was a gut punch: Andy Duong had “surveillance footage” of Bonta in a compromising situation, footage allegedly captured during the Duongs’ notorious “entertainments,” where officials were secretly recorded for future leverage. Juarez didn’t mince words. The footage, he warned, could trigger “public embarrassment at the least” or expose “illicit activities, including the use of drugs.”
The letter read like a prophecy. Juarez laid out the Duongs’ entire operation, money laundering, fake contracts, a straw-donor factory, prostitution arranged for elected officials, “including minors.” He detailed fabricated payouts to Andre Jones, $80,000 during Thao’s 2022 mayoral run, later updated to $95,000 in the federal indictment. And then came the most harrowing revelation: Juarez described being assaulted just six days earlier, beaten, robbed, forced to record a coerced apology video by Andy and his sister Kristina outside California Waste Solutions headquarters. He told Bonta he believed his life was in danger: “I do feel at this point that I am subject to possible murder attempts.”
This wasn’t a theoretical complaint. This was a man begging the state’s top law-enforcement officer for protection, praising Bonta’s supposed integrity, pleading for action.
And what did Bonta do?
Nothing that protected the public. Nothing that stopped the Duong machine. Nothing that acknowledged the whistleblower who risked his life to expose corruption in Bonta’s own backyard.
But the receipts are surfacing. The connections are tightening. And the public is finally paying attention.
Follow the filings. Follow the PACs. Follow the spouses. Follow the nonprofits. Follow the Oakland donors and the LA power players. When all the lines converge in the same Sacramento office suites and the same Los Angeles backrooms, that’s not politics.
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