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  "description": "Attorney defends self from drug sale accusation, Riverside judge candidates speak on their advancement, IE men charged with terrorism plot and Riverside sees shakeup in city attorney, manager.",
  "path": "/no-55/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-21T14:00:07.000Z",
  "site": "https://ielaw.news",
  "tags": [
    "The release",
    "Spencer Seyb",
    "Tammy Higgins",
    "here",
    "without cause in April 2025",
    "city council memorandum",
    "Council hires new city attorney, waives public notice rule to do so",
    "FREEMAN__SUSAN___CITY_OF_RIVERSIDE (1)FREEMAN__SUSAN___CITY_OF_RIVERSIDE (1).pdf410 KBdownload-circle",
    "the program's website",
    "website",
    "Newsom says he’s on Trump’s ‘hit list’ as Justice Department interviews governor’s friends",
    "Gavin Newsom",
    "Donald Trump",
    "Newsom stated that he was “proud”....",
    "New commission takes aim at California’s broken public defense system",
    "“We have discussed the problem of our public defense system for years...”",
    "He spent 19 years in isolation on death row. Then the handcuffs came off",
    "San Quentin",
    "Still sentenced to death, they might never become eligible for...",
    "DOJ finds Redlands Unified largely compliant, cites investigation delays",
    "Community Forward Redlands",
    "Brennan stressed",
    "his dissent",
    "Ralph Waldo Emerson's \"Concord Hymn\"",
    "Barbara Frietchie",
    "This Founding Father Died in Disgrace. But He Can’t Be Forgotten"
  ],
  "textContent": "Please don’t take this publication for granted. IELaw.news was founded on the belief that the press should be owned by local people, without interference by algorithms, clickbait or AI.\n\nBut my work can't continue without your support. To be an early supporter of local press, ****become a paid subscriber****.\n\nBecoming a paid subscriber is the most impactful way to help keep this newsletter alive and demonstrate that there’s a better approach to journalism. Subscriptions start at $15 a month or $125 a year. Click the button below— and thank you for supporting independent journalism.\n\nThank you\n\n* * *\n\n### Attorney: Sheriff's accusation he sold drugs to inmates defamatory\n\nAttorney Bryan Fazio of Irvine | Courtesy photo\n\nA May 28 release by the San Bernardino Sheriff's Office claimed that attorney Bryan Fazio took drugs to the Central Detention Center, with the intent to sell.\n\nFazio told IELaw.news by phone the release not only incorrect, but defamatory.\n\n\"What criminal defense lawyer is stupid enough to bring a backpack full of drugs to a jail?\" Fazio asked.\n\nThe release claims that Fazio, stopped by sheriff's investigators after a visit with a client in the county jail, \"was found to be in possession of various suspected narcotics and a digital scale.\" Fazio's driver, David Montrenes, was first contacted by sheriff's investigators while he was waiting for Fazio to conclude his visit. After the investigation, \"search warrants were authored and served at their residences, where additional narcotics were located.\"\n\nThe search of Fazio's residence did not result in any drugs being found, Fazio said. As proof, the attorney provided IELaw.news with a search warrant receipt. Under the category \"items taken,\" the investigating officer wrote \"None.\" No references to drugs were in the receipt.\n\nAlthough they were each booked on a count of bringing drugs into a jail or prison, no charges have since been filed.\n\nWhat the release leaves out, Fazio says, is that the drugs and the digital scale were in Montrenes' backpack, which deputies left in Fazio's possession. Montrenes, a former client of Fazio, drove Fazio to the jail because Fazio's cancer treatment, and health issues related to his time in military service, have left him unable to drive from Irvine to the jail. The backpack containing drugs was obviously Montrenes', Fazio said, considering it contained his car title, registration and car keys.\n\nNo drugs were found on Fazio's person after he returned from jail, the attorney says. He disputed the possibility of him bringing drugs to the jail, considering he was searched when he entered the building.\n\n\"I had no idea he had a backpack full of drugs,\" Fazio said.\n\nIELaw.news asked San Bernardino Sheriff's Department spokesperson Jenny Smith about the discrepancies between the department's story and Fazio's on Thursday afternoon. This publication specifically asked whether drugs were found on Fazio's person, whether Montrenes or Fazio agreed to have the car searched, what probable cause the deputies had to search the car, the type of narcotics found in the car and where the scale was found. The request also asked the department to explain the discrepancy between the accounts that drugs were found were found at Fazio's home, and to address Fazio's claim that the car was a gray Nissan Ultima, not a red Nissan Sentra as the release said.\n\nSmith said that no further information would be released. After asking why, Smith roped in a supervisor, who has not replied, possibly due to the federal holiday on Friday.\n\nFazio, a Navy veteran, represents veterans in the veteran diversion court. He left his full-time work as a result of his intensive cancer treatments, helping clients part-time, until his job was terminated due to the sheriff's department release.\n\n\"I make $115,000 a year. Why would I need to be a drug dealer?\" Fazio said.\n\nFazio believes he was targeted because of his disability due to his long-term cancer treatments and his status as a veteran, both of which are reflected in his license plate. The responding investigator challenged the legitimacy of Fazio's disability, Fazio said.\n\n\"I was stumbling out of the car, it could have looked like I was under the influence,\" he said.\n\nMontrenes parked the car in a disability parking spot in the employee parking lot. The employee parking sign was hidden by a truck, Fazio said.\n\nAfter being booked, Fazio was taken to a hospital for a panic attack, exacerbated by his cancer treatments, he said. At the hospital, he was deprived of necessary medication.He also said that during the execution of the search warrant, his 70-year-old mother was placed in handcuffs.\n\nFazio worked with Spencer Seyb before going to part-time work with Tammy Higgins of Fullerton, starting May 15, due to his cancer treatments. Due to the Sheriff Department's release, he no longer works at Higgins' firm.\n\nFazio was a petty officer third class in the United States Navy, where he served from 2009 until 2012. He was medically discharged after developing stage 4 lymphoma cancer. Fazio joined the bar in 2017, after graduating from Whittier Law School. He joined Snyder Law for a year as an attorney consultant, providing support to veterans with Veteran Afffairs benefits. He then joined the Orange County Public Defender's Office as a law clerk. He worked for the Social Security Administration in Santa Ana from 2018 until 2020, then served on Riverside's Juvenile Defense Panel from Oct. 3, 2021, until March 14, 2025. He was a founding member of the Orange County Bar Association Veterans Committee, and has volunteered for the California Justice Veteran Project and the Veteran Legal Institute.\n\n\"They have lied. They have defamed me. I have lost my job,\" Fazio said.\n\nThe attorney said that the release was intentionally written as an attack on him.\n\nIELaw.news reached out to the email address listed as Fazio's on the State Bar website at the time of the press release's publication, but did not hear back until this week.\n\n* * *\n\n## Judicial candidate statements\n\nLast week, IELaw.news reported on Riverside judicial candidates Andrea Garcia and Michelle Paradise advancing to the general election. Here are the statements from each advancing candidate.\n\nIELaw.news' interviews of each candidate, including both audio and transcripts, can be found here.\n\n### Michelle Paradise's statement\n\n\"I am deeply honored and sincerely grateful for the confidence the voters of Riverside County placed in me in the primary election. I want to thank every voter, volunteer, supporter, and community member who believed in my campaign and helped us reach this important milestone. Your trust is something I will never take for granted.\n\n\"I also want to congratulate Andrea Garcia on advancing to the general election. I look forward to continuing a campaign that reflects the dignity and professionalism expected of those seeking judicial office.\n\n\"I would also like to thank Jennifer Loflin for the professional and respectful manner in which she conducted her campaign. She ran a clean race that served as a positive example of civility throughout the election process.\n\n\"As we move toward the general election, I remain committed to earning the support of voters through experience, integrity, and a steadfast commitment to fairness, impartiality, and the rule of law. I look forward to continuing conversations with our communities across Riverside County about the importance of an independent and qualified judiciary.\"\n\n### Andrea Garcia's statement\n\n\"The primary election results mark a defining moment in Riverside County and judicial elections.\n\n\"The support from people of all backgrounds humbles me. I am honored to be the candidate with the most judges' support. Every day, people built this campaign with the belief 'we think we can.' I was the last one to enter the race. Yet, now We The People have the opportunity to make history. After 133 years, Riverside County could elect its first Latina judge, because we already did in the primary.\n\n\"The percentages reflect something very important: an informed and engaged\ncommunity. Voters took the time to learn about the candidates, participate in the process, and make their voices heard.\n\n\"Regardless of where the numbers landed, this level of involvement strengthens our democracy and our community.\n\n\"There's more work to do.\"\n\n* * *\n\n### Calimesa, Pinon Hills men charged with DC terrorism plot\n\nBryan Omar Roa of Calimesa and Michael Allen Thomas are accused of planning a terrorism attack on the Ultimate Fighting Championship match held at the White House last Sunday.\n\nA preliminary hearing is set for June 29. Roa will be arraigned July 7, and Thomas will be arraigned July 21.\n\nThe FBI searched the defendants' residences and interviewed them both on June 13, the day before the match.\n\nRoa denied taking part in a conspiracy, but said he did plan to drive to D.C. to protest, according to the affidavit written by FBI Special Agent Mark Prator. Roa said he started the drive to the capital—but returned home after he had car troubles. Traffic cameras showed Roa driving through Barstow on June 11. Thomas admitted to planning the attack, according to Prator.\n\n\"During the interview, Thomas stated that he saw himself as the planner and advisor for the group, and while he was not willing to take action himself, wanted to guide and instruct others on how to carry out attacks,\" Prator wrote.\n\nInside Roa's vehicle, Prator found firearms and radios. In Thomas' residence, law enforcement found two rifles and 180 rounds of ammunition.\n\nRoa and Thomas were named as participants in the plot by other alleged co-conspirators, who met first on TikTok before migrating to the messaging app Signal. The first person arrested was 19-year-old Tycen C. Proper of Danville, Ohio. His mother called the police on June 10 after seeing her son's purchase of firearms and communications online. Proper's mother said that her son had joined an ultra-religious, anti-government group online that was concerned about government corruption, the Epstein files and data centers' water use. According to Prator, Proper had a journal in which he wrote that the government sacrifices children.\n\nWhen interviewed, Proper said he was helping plan an attack on the UFC fight. The stated plan was to launch drones armed with bombs, and then to gun down UFC event participants who fled the scene. Proper identified an account, which the FBI alleged was operated by Thomas, as the primary planner of the attack.\n\nChat messages between Roa and Thomas were included in the complaint. In them, Roa and Thomas discussed meeting for a beer on May 22. On May 24, they planned a shooting practice. The next day, Thomas posted messages saying that an unidentified \"we\" needed to train for guerrilla style warfare, including raid attacks and infiltration.\n\n\"And that won’t be for a while. There’s a lot we can do before we fight toe to toe,\" his account posted, according to the complaint.\n\nOn June 7, a member of the chat wrote Thomas that the cost of the drones and charges would be $1,300. Thomas allegedly replied with, \"I’m flat broke. I can pay in manpower though I bet you could come up with $100 in a week somehow.\"\n\nChat messages found on Roa's phone also discussed the attack. Another co-conspirator, identified as a Missouri man in the complaint, wrote, \"once each team is mission ready the green light will be given and the drone rigged with explosives will fly (and) they will initiate the attack,\" and \"rooftop snipers will initiate their part of the plan eliminating (high value targets).\"\n\nNineteen people were co-conspirators in the plan, according to the FBI.\n\nRead the full indictment against Roa and Thomas here.\n\n* * *\n\n### Riverside hires new city attorney\n\nThe Riverside City Council hired Los Angeles ' James Johnson as their city attorney June 16. Johnson previously served as general counsel for Los Angeles' Housing Authority. He will be paid $372,624 annually, with a three-year contract. In 2024, the previous city attorney, Phaedra Norton, was paid $374,113 in today's money, after adjusting for inflation.\n\nThe city council dismissed Norton without cause in April 2025. Rebecca McKee-Reimbold has been interim city manager since April 29, 2025.\n\nThe city council started recruiting for a new city attorney in August 2025 and again in February 2026, according to a city council memorandum. Councilmembers voted 5-2 to hire him. His employment agreement is here.\n\nThe Raincross Gazette has more information: Council hires new city attorney, waives public notice rule to do so.\n\n* * *\n\n### Riverside's city managers' wife settles defamation claim against city\n\nSusan Freeman settled her defamation claim against the city of Riverside last week, with a zero-dollar agreement that prohibits city councilors from discussing her involvement in city management.\n\nFreeman's husband, city manager Mike Futrell, resigned his post the same day, receiving a lump-sum severance of nine months of his base salary and nine months of contributions to deferred compensation plan.\n\n\"In (signing this agreement), I am choosing to move forward with peace, dignity, and gratitude for the many people who showed kindness and support during an extraordinarily difficult time,\" Freeman announced.\n\nFutrell was slated to start as Pasadena's city manager in April, until the Pasadena City Council rescinded his job offer for an unannounced reason. Futrell blamed the loss of the job on a Dec. 11 letter sent by the Riverside City Council to Freeman.\n\n\"Then we get down to, I’m closing for the post, someone emails the mayor of Pasadena the letter, and the rest is history,” Futrell told Neighbors Better Together.\n\nJason Hunter, a Riverside gadfly, posted the letter on April 3. The letter claims Freeman inserted herself into the city management process.\n\n\"Comments made to City staff that insinuate you are part of the City's decision-making team are inappropriate,\" the letter says. The letter can be read in two parts, here, and here.\n\nFreeman filed a claim against the city alleging the city attempted to silence her, in violation of her protected speech, on June 12. The claim called for monetary damages, but the terms of the settlement agreement don't mention money. Instead, it prohibits Freeman and city councilmembers from making \"disparaging comments\" about each other.\n\nFREEMAN__SUSAN___CITY_OF_RIVERSIDE (1)FREEMAN__SUSAN___CITY_OF_RIVERSIDE (1).pdf410 KBdownload-circle\n\n* * *\n\n## Local opportunities\n\n### Become an advocate for children in need\n\nSan Bernardino needs more volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocates. CASA volunteers are special advocates who advocate for children that have entered the juvenile dependency court system. These children need someone to look out for them, and that someone can be you. CASA volunteers attend court and review records, but they do not have to be attorneys. The time commitment is 10-15 hours per month. Read more at the program's website.\n\n### Free legal aid clinics\n\nInland Empire Latino Lawyers Association hosts free legal aid clinics at the 838 Alta St., Redlands, on the last Wednesday of every month. They also host clinics the first, second and fourth Monday of every month at Bordwell Park, 2008 Martin Luther King Blvd., Riverside. All clinics are held from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. More information at their website.\n\n* * *\n\n### Newsom says he’s on Trump’s ‘hit list’ as Justice Department interviews governor’s friends\n\nGov. Gavin Newsom on Monday accused President Donald Trump of placing him and his wife on a political “hit list” and directing federal investigators to go on a “fishing expedition” for a crime it could use to indict him.\n\nThe Democratic governor declared that the president was targeting him because Newsom is considering a run for president in 2028.\n\n“In recent days, federal agents have knocked on the doors of family friends and former employees,” Newsom said in the video. “Not because they found a crime, but because they simply are trying to find one.”\n\nNewsom stated that he was “proud”....\n\n* * *\n\n### New commission takes aim at California’s broken public defense system\n\nA new commission made up of legislators, public defenders, academics and advocates seeks to push California — one of just two states that don’t pay for basic public defense — to begin providing resources and enforcing minimum standards for county public defender systems.\n\nThe California Independent Commission on Public Defense includes three assemblymembers and two senators — among them Jesse Arreguín and Nick Schultz, chairs of the Senate and Assembly Public Safety Committees — as well as chief public defenders from several counties, retired judges, the directors of criminal justice nonprofits, and the heads of organizations representing thousands of defense attorneys in the state.\n\n“We have discussed the problem of our public defense system for years...”\n\n* * *\n\n### He spent 19 years in isolation on death row. Then the handcuffs came off\n\nJohnny Morales struggled to find sleep. He dozed off for a few moments, but officers came to his death row cell and woke him a little after midnight. They needed to inventory and box up his belongings. He was leaving San Quentin.\n\nHands cuffed behind his back, he walked across the empty upper yard in the dim gray hours before daylight. An officer walked alongside him step for step, black latex-gloved fingers holding onto Morales’s arm.\n\nFor almost 20 years, Morales could only experience the world outside his 4-by-11 foot cell in the condemned housing unit like this — chained and escorted by officers. Security protocols required all death row residents be handcuffed or shackled any time they were out in open space with staff.\n\nMorales and hundreds of death row residents were gradually being transferred from San Quentin to facilities where they could be treated like any other prisoner. They’d have the opportunity to be part of a general population — to feel an unexpected sense of freedom while remaining incarcerated.\n\nStill sentenced to death, they might never become eligible for...\n\n* * *\n\n### DOJ finds Redlands Unified largely compliant, cites investigation delays\n\nState report says district met nearly all court-ordered reforms but remains partially compliant on complaint resolution timelines\n\nCommunity Forward Redlands\n\n* * *\n\n### Today in history: flag burning decided to be protected speech\n\nOn June 21, 1989, the United States Supreme Court ruled that burning of the American flag is protected speech. As we enter into the 251st year of our nation, the patriotism endorsed by both Justice William Brennan, writing for the court, and Justice William Rehnquist, dissenting, shows how patriotism is not divided among ideological lines.\n\nBrennan stressed that to support American values means to allow the burning of the flag, while showing one's own reverence for it.\n\n\"Our decision is a reaffirmation of the principles of freedom and inclusiveness that the flag best reflects, and of the conviction that our toleration of criticism such as Johnson's is a sign and source of our strength,\" Brennan wrote. \"Indeed, one of the proudest images of our flag, the one immortalized in our own national anthem, is of the bombardment it survived at Fort McHenry. It is the Nation's resilience, not its rigidity, that Texas sees reflected in the flag-and it is that resilience that we reassert today.\"\n\n\"We can imagine no more appropriate response to burning a flag than waving one's own, no better way to counter a flag burner's message than by saluting the flag that burns, no surer means of preserving the dignity even of the flag that burned than by-as one witness here did-according its remains a respectful burial. We do not consecrate the flag by punishing its desecration, for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents,\" Brennan wrote.\n\nIn his dissent, Rehnquist referenced poem after poem. He starts by quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson's \"Concord Hymn\" (the shot heard round the world), then Francis Scott Key's \"The Star Spangled Banner\", then the entirety of John Greenleaf Whittier's Civil War poem \"Barbara Frietchie.\" He goes on to recount the mounting of the flag at Iwo Jima, which cost 6,000 lives, and references complaints about flag burning from Vietnam veterans.\n\n\"The American flag, then, throughout more than 200 years of our history, has come to be the visible symbol embodying our Nation. It does not represent the views of any particular political party, and it does not represent any particular political philosophy. The flag is not simply another 'idea' or 'point of view' competing for recognition in the marketplace of ideas. Millions and millions of Americans regard it with an almost mystical reverence, regardless of what sort of social, political, or philosophical beliefs they may have. I cannot agree that the First Amendment invalidates the Act of Congress, and the laws of 48 of the 50 States, which make criminal the public burning of the flag,\" Rehnquist wrote.\n\n### Book recommendation:\n\nThis week's book recommendation is \"The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People's Constitution\" by legal historian Jesse Wegman:\n\n\"As a young lawyer, James Wilson made a celebrated case for American independence in an essay that inspired the famous words 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' He wrote the first draft of the Constitution and, along with the more famous James Madison, played perhaps the essential role in its ultimate creation.\n\n\"Wilson believed that the people are the ultimate source of all power. He argued successfully for a strong central government and a powerful presidency, and fought unsuccessfully for a direct vote for the president and the Senate. Appointed as a justice to the first Supreme Court, he was later brought down by reckless land speculation and died of malaria in the back room of a North Carolina tavern while hiding from his creditors.\n\n\"Instead of being remembered as one of the nation’s great political thinkers, Wilson was virtually written out of history. But in  _The Lost Founder_ , Wegman brings to life the most prescient of the earliest patriots and makes a convincing argument that scandal should not diminish the life and impact of a brilliant, complicated man whose vision for his country could not be more relevant today.\"\n\nThe Atlantic published an excerpt: This Founding Father Died in Disgrace. But He Can’t Be Forgotten (gift link).\n\nThe book will be released on Tuesday, and is available on preorder for $28. Purchase it here.",
  "title": "No. 55",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-21T14:00:08.228Z"
}