Former Los Angeles City Council member Jose Huizar pleaded guilty to corruption charges on Thursday, reversing his years-long protestations of innocence and further exposing a culture of corruption at City Hall.

As Breitbart News reported in 2020, Huizar was raided by the FBI over suspected payments from developers:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested L.A. City Councilman Jose Huizar (D) on Tuesday morning for corruption, alleging that he had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and treated his office like a “criminal enterprise.”

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Huizar represent[ed] downtown Los Angeles. The DOJ alleges that he solicited bribes from developers, particularly Chinese developers, who sought his help in speeding their way through the planning procedures of the city.

In 2014, Breitbart News reported that the city settled a sexual harassment lawsuit in which Huizar was alleged to have carried on a romantic affair with his deputy chief of staff.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

Former Los Angeles City Councilmember Jose Huizar has agreed to plead guilty to racketeering and tax evasion, admitting that he extorted at least $1.5 million in bribes from real estate developers.

In a plea agreement filed Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles, Huizar acknowledged that sweeping corruption allegations that he has denied for years were actually true, saying he was “pleading guilty because I am guilty of the charges.”

Huizar’s unexpected capitulation caps a brutal downfall for a man who was born into poverty on a Mexican ranch, grew up in Boyle Heights, and went on to earn a master’s at Princeton and a law degree at UCLA before serving 15 years on the L.A. City Council.

Huizar’s downfall is accentuated by the fact that he was celebrated as a civic leader in L.A. — particularly on the subject of homelessness — and honored for his career achievements by a plaque in his hometown in Mexico.

Huizar is not the only elected leader or official — on both sides of the aisle — to have been implicated in the city’s corruption. Many others have been prosecuted and face prosecution; some have already served time.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.