Disgraced former Anaheim Mayor Harry Sidhu was sentenced to two months in prison and a year of supervised release, along with a $55,000 fine at the Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse in Santa Ana on Friday afternoon.
“I am ashamed and I put my whole heart in the letter that I have described and given to you,” he said to U.S District Judge John Holcomb before his sentence was handed down.
His sentence is set to start on Sept. 2.
“I do believe that the defendant betrayed the City of Anaheim,” Holcomb said before sentencing Sidhu Friday afternoon. “That breach of trust warrants a term of incarceration.”
In 2023, Sidhu pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice by destroying records about the corrupted Angel Stadium land sale.
He also pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI and the Federal Aviation Authority, along with wire fraud stemming from a helicopter purchase in which he tried evading California sales tax.
[Read: Ex-Anaheim Mayor Sidhu Agrees to Plead Guilty to Corruption Charges]
Sidhu’s sentence comes nearly three years after revelations of an FBI corruption probe into Anaheim City hall surfaced in May 2022, when federal investigators first detailed the sketchy Angel Stadium sale process and the outsized influence Disneyland resort interests have on City Hall.
Many of those findings were largely backed up by city-contracted independent investigators in a separate report released in 2023.
[Read: Anaheim’s Own Look at City Hall Finds Disneyland Resort Businesses Improperly Steer Policymaking]
Federal investigators also alleged Sidhu tried ramming through the Angel Stadium sale for $1 million in campaign support – something he disputed in court filings.
“Rather than work to ensure the city of Anaheim received the best deal possible from the Angels, defendant worked behind the scenes to make the potential deal better for the Angels – and as defendant later acknowledged in a recorded phone call, did so with the expectation that he would receive a significant campaign contribution of at least $1 million,” reads a recent court filing from federal prosecutors.
But in his recent court filing, while Sidhu admitted FBI agents did record him “boasting” about expecting campaign support, he said he didn’t commit bribery or solicit the donation.
“Mr. Sidhu never agreed with the Angels to use his position as mayor to approve the stadium deal, he never asked the Angels for a campaign donation after the Stadium deal was approved, and the Angels never made any such campaign donation,” reads the court filing. “Indeed, Mr. Sidhu has never been charged with bribery, honest services fraud, or any other public corruption offense.”
On Thursday, California Auditor Grant Parks released a scathing report that found the City of Anaheim doesn’t know what kind of condition the taxpayer-owned Angel Stadium is in – detailing multiple oversight issues within the current lease.
[Read: CA Auditors: Anaheim Doesn’t Know if Angel Stadium is Trashed]
It’s a lease Sidhu pushed to get reinstated in January 2019 after the Angels opted out in October 2018 – effectively tying up the stadium ahead of the stadium sale negotiations.
During Sidhu’s tenure as mayor, which stretched from late 2018 to May 2022, he spearheaded efforts to silence stadium critics through a series of parliamentary rule changes and got himself appointed to the city’s negotiating team.
Federal investigators said he shared critical information with an Angels consultant and deleted emails about it, impeding a federal investigation.
“Without informing the rest of that team, defendant provided confidential inside information belonging to the city – including confidential negotiation information – to Todd Ament, who was then CEO of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce, and to a consultant working for the Angels (the “Angels consultant”), so that the Angels could buy Angel Stadium from the city on terms beneficial to the Angels,” reads the court filing from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
In a recent court filing from Sidhu’s lawyers, Paul Meyer and Craig Wilke, the former mayor admitted to helping the team buy the stadium on favorable terms.
“In July 2020, Mr. Sidhu sent an email from his personal email account to Mr. Ament and an Angels consultant with an attached confidential memorandum prepared by City attorneys which discussed the sale terms,” reads the filing. “Mr. Sidhu shared this information so that the Angels could purchase the site on beneficial terms.”
But in court on Friday, Wilke said the city’s negotiating points Sidhu emailed to the Angels consultant didn’t contain any private information – but the overall email was considered private because the material was written by the city attorney.
“There were no secrets about the negotiation points,” Wilke told Holcomb, adding it “didn’t affect the outcome of this (stadium) deal.”
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Melissa Rabbani “there would have been no reason to forward that to the Angels” if those specific deal points were public.
Sidhu’s attorneys were asking for no prison time, three years of probation and a $40,000 fine – but also didn’t object to the federal Probation Office’s recommendation of a $175,000 fine and 400 hours of community service.
Rabbani said that would send the wrong message.
“I think that sends a troublesome message that these kinds of problems can be bought out of,” she told Holcomb.
A Corrupted Stadium Sale
Sidhu’s city council majority voted to begin the stadium sale process in December 2019 – a little more than a month after negotiations between team representatives and city officials officially began.
While the starting price was $325 million for the stadium and the 150 acres it sits on, the final price was unknown because of undefined “community benefit credits.”
The starting price was eventually reduced to $320 million in 2020 so the city could hang onto two acres for a water well and a fire station.
Yet the cash price was more than cut in half by the deal’s “community benefit credits.”
In the final deal, city council members voted to take roughly $170 million off the final sales price – effectively subsidizing $123 million for at least 466 units of affordable housing and $46 million for a seven-acre park.
[Read: Anaheim Council Sells Angel Stadium and Land for $150 Million, Subsidizes Housing and Park]
Throughout 2021, the state Department of Housing and Community Development repeatedly warned Anaheim city officials that they illegally sold the stadium under the state’s Surplus Land Act – a law stipulating that surplus public properties should be auctioned off for affordable housing first.
In April 2022, California Attorney General Rob Bonta spearheaded efforts to levy a $96 million fine on Anaheim for violating the Surplus Land Act.
At the time, Sidhu claimed the $96 million was “new cash” from Angels owner, Arte Moreno.
But it wasn’t.
Officials instead restructured the back end of the deal, taking the $96 million out of the subsidized affordable housing and park.
Shortly before a judge was going to finalize Surplus Land Act fine in OC Superior Court, FBI agents filed a damning 46-page affidavit at the 11th-hour, detailing many of the crimes Sidhu would eventually plead guilty to – including obstruction of justice.
[Read: Santana: FBI Reveals The Secret Agenda Behind Anaheim’s Sale of Angel Stadium]
Federal prosecutors lambasted Sidhu’s moves in their recent court filing.
“As the mayor of Anaheim, defendant had a position of immense public trust – and wasted no time in violating that trust for his own benefit. The sale of Angel Stadium presented an opportunity to bring the City hundreds of millions in revenue and benefit its residents,” prosecutors wrote.
“Instead of working for the benefit of Anaheim’s residents, however, defendant followed the money and worked in the best interests of the Angels, a group he understood could benefit him in turn with large campaign contributions to keep his political career going.”
Federal officials apparently aren’t done investigating either, according to a March 14 court filing from Sidhu’s attorneys.
“Mr. Sidhu also fully cooperated with federal authorities in their investigation of others by providing complete and truthful information to federal prosecutors and agents about several matters that are the subject of ongoing federal investigations.”
Spencer Custodio is the civic editor. You can reach him at scustodio@voiceofoc.org. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerCustodio.