LA councilman faces call to resign after $138K fine for swank Vegas trip

What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas — at least for politicians from the City of Angels.

Los Angeles Councilman John Lee got slapped Wednesday with a nearly $140,000 fine by the city’s Ethics Commission for improper meals and a 2017 trip to Las Vegas in which he allegedly dined on exotic dishes, guzzled booze and accepted gambling chips on the dime of shady businessmen in violation of city rules, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.

The Ethics Commission’s unanimous 4-0 vote found that Lee — who at the time of the trip was a City Hall staffer — broke city gift laws and failed to properly disclose the freebies, which included a fancy meal at Aria Resort & Casino’s Blossom restaurant and bottle service at Hakkasan nightclub.

Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo, a Democrat who represents parts of Southern California that include Lee’s district in northwest San Fernando Valley, called on him to resign Thursday. She cited the Ethics Commission’s decision as just the latest scandal to rock the City Council, from members saying racist comments about a colleague’s son to a councilman and his wife allegedly embezzling $800,000 meant for housing and public transit.

“Such abuse of public office erodes trust and harms not just one individual, but the integrity of the institution itself,” Schiavo said in a statement to The Post. “Based on my experience as both a colleague and a constituent, John Lee has failed to demonstrate that he serves the people of our community first, instead showing a pattern of transactional and self-serving behavior that undermines confidence in his judgment.”

Lee argued during a multi-day hearing in June that he barely ate during the meals and attempted to pay his fair share, according to the Times.

Ji-Lan Zang, an administrative law judge who oversaw the hearing, reportedly doubted some of Lee’s claims and recommended a fine of roughly $44,000 after concluding that he had violated five of the 10 counts against him. But the Ethics Commission ruled this week that Lee violated all 10 counts, hitting him with a fine more than three times Zang’s proposed penalty.

Commission President Manjusha Kulkarni advocated for the maximum fine, stating that Lee’s lack of disclosures gave him an unfair advantage in his first two campaigns, in 2019 and 2020, according to The Times. He was reelected to another term last year.

Lee issued a scathing statement Wednesday calling the fine “absurd” while also blasting the Ethics Commission’s process as “wasteful and political.”

“The commission picking and choosing which people to target based on their political views is not oversight — it is retribution and a department running amok,” Lee said.

He added that the commission had ignored the statute of limitations in the case, and he plans to appeal the fine in court.

A cloud of suspicion has surrounded Lee and his former boss and District 12 predecessor, ex-Councilman Mitchell Englander, who also took part in the 2017 trip to Vegas and would later plead guilty in 2020 to lying to federal investigators about taking cash and other gifts.

During the Vegas trip in 2017, Englander accepted an envelope with $10,000 in cash from a businessman seeking to make connections with real estate developers in Los Angeles, according to the The Times.

Englander resigned from his seat on the City Council during the criminal probe and agreed to pay a nearly $80,000 ethics fine in 2023, the same year the Ethics Commission launched its investigation into Lee. He was reportedly investigated not only for the Vegas trip, but also for meals in downtown LA and Koreatown.

“Given the seriousness of these violations,” Schiavo said, “his continued service on the City Council and influential committees is compromised and an ethical leader would resign.”