Los Angeles County has always run on power, proximity, and the kind of insider privilege that never appears on a balance sheet. But over the last four years, the mask has slipped.
The coordinated takedown of former Sheriff Alex Villanueva wasn’t a matter of reform, ideology, or even public safety. It was a political survival mission, a shadow war waged by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and their well-funded network of nonprofits, consultants, and operatives who needed Villanueva out of the way before his investigations dragged them into the sunlight.
The truth is brutally simple: Villanueva became a threat the moment he started pulling the threads that held LA County’s corruption tapestry together.
Today, as new scandals erupt across homelessness funding, ARPA distributions, and county contracting, the motive behind his removal has never been clearer. They didn’t defeat Villanueva because he failed. They defeated him because he got too close.
The unraveling started in October 2021, when Villanueva publicly accused the Board of Supervisors of operating like a continuing criminal enterprise and urged the FBI to investigate.
It wasn’t hyperbole; it was a direct shot at the county’s ruling class and their multimillion-dollar political machine. What followed was the kind of coordinated response that only happens when power brokers feel the walls closing in.
Villanueva’s internal Public Corruption Unit had already begun connecting dots between county contracts, campaign donors, political appointees, and no-bid deals quietly awarded to friends of the Board. One of those threads led straight to Supervisor Sheila Kuehl and her close ally Patti Giggans, whose nonprofit, Peace Over Violence, won an eyebrow-raising series of sole-source contracts to operate a transit hotline that produced more invoices than meaningful data. LASD investigators executed warrants in September 2022, and the political establishment erupted in outrage, accusing Villanueva of retaliation rather than acknowledging the substance of the allegations. It was the moment the fight went from backstage maneuvering to open warfare.
Hellbound and Down 