Former state Sen. Leland Yee faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine after a deal in federal court Wednesday in which he pleaded guilty to one felony count of racketeering. “Today’s news turns the page on one of the darker chapters of the Senate’s history,” Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) said in a statement. The pleas entered Wednesday by Yee; his political fundraiser and consultant Keith Jackson; Jackson’s son, Brandon Jackson; and sports promoter Marlon Sullivan bring an end to one of two cases connected to a massive federal probe that initially targeted a Chinatown figure known as “Shrimp Boy,” now accused of organized crime activities.
According to the report in the Los Angeles Times, the case, with 29 defendants lumped into a single indictment (one had since died) and eventually split into two cases, has produced 9 million pages of documents and countless hours of audio recordings. Prosecutors alleged that Yee can be heard in the recordings speaking bluntly about granting legislative favors in exchange for campaign contributions, first for his failed 2011 bid for San Francisco mayor and later for his aborted run for secretary of state.
“We gotta drag it out, man. We gotta juice this thing,” the indictment quoted Yee as telling an undercover agent who claimed to be connected to an NFL team that wanted to “help” Yee in exchange for his vote on a worker’s compensation bill affecting the athletes. Among the other charges, Yee admitted to conspiring to extort several individuals who, at the time, had an interest in pending legislation extending the state athletic commission and changing the workers’ compensation program for professional athletes.
Yee, who spared himself a trial where those sealed recordings and others would have been publicly shared, received no assurance that his prison sentence, which is scheduled to be handed down on Oct. 21, would fall below the 20-year maximum spelled out in federal guidelines. By pleading guilty to racketeering, Yee admitted that he “knowingly and intentionally agreed with another person” to take part in an enterprise, commit at least two offenses and affect state commerce.
The plea agreement is the culmination of a stunning political collapse for Yee, who spent more than a decade in the Legislature and was running for secretary of state when he was arrested in March 2014. Days later, he was suspended from the Senate with pay, and he served the remaining months of his term in exile.