Arnold Forde, one of Orange County’s sleaziest political operatives who helped drain massive public funds intended for the proposed Great Park project in Irvine, died at 82 years old on Saturday, according to the Voice of OC.
For many of his final years, Forde lived well off a $100,000 a month, no benchmarks public relations deal handed to him without competitive bidding by career politicians Larry Agran, Sukhee Kang and Beth Krom.
Forde received the windfall to supposedly perform public relations for the Great Park while it was non-existent.
Under Agran and Forde’s mismanagement, the Great Park project, arguably one of California’s most corrupt public operations, made political insiders rich while handing residents empty promises for more than a decade.
District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, another jewel of corruption, refused to investigate the financial shenanigans that handed Forde, Agran’s personal political consultant, at least $7.23 million.
Rackauckas and Forde became buddies in the early 1980s.
The ethically-flimsy DA, who claims to be ultra-conservative, aided Agran, an unabashed liberal, in his campaigns by inaction as well as performing supportive election robo-calls.
In 2014, a shameless New York Times writer celebrated Forde’s wealth without mentioning how he looted the Great Park project, a move that earned a necessary Weekly correction.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.