Five years ago, Chula Vista Mayor and current San Diego County Supervisor candidate John McCann wrote a letter to then-President Donald Trump asking for clemency on behalf of a local businesswoman convicted of fraud.
It worked. Trump officials cited McCann’s letter as one of the reasons Trump commuted Adriana Camberos’ two-year prison sentence on his last day in office.
Our South Bay investigative reporter Jim Hinch dug what happened after. Camberos and her brother, Andres Camberos, got involved in Chula Vista public affairs. They made donations and Andres Camberos opened Chula Vista’s first cannabis dispensary — later gratefully acknowledging the advice McCann provided him during that process.
Less than six months after she left prison, Adriana Camberos bought a $1.6 million condominium in Coronado that a real estate company owned by McCann had listed for sale a few months earlier. McCann’s company took the property off the market three days after Adriana Camberos left prison and was not involved in the transaction when she purchased it.
Back in trouble: A judge is scheduled to sentence the Camberos siblings in a second fraud scheme, for which they were convicted on multiple counts late last year. Prosecutors said the siblings commenced their fraud – which involved repackaging and diverting goods intended for sale in Mexico – less than six weeks after Trump freed Adriana Camberos from prison.
McCann said he was sorry to hear that Adriana Camberos had returned to committing crimes so soon after leaving prison. But he said he had received nothing in return for writing the clemency letter.
South County Report: EPA Director Talks Trash About River Trash
Few things seem to draw people together quite like the Tijuana River sewage crisis. That was the case when Trump-appointed Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin toured the Tijuana River Valley on Tuesday, flanked by local Republican and Democratic politicians.
Zeldin struck a familiarly stern tone about the crisis, saying Americans were “out of patience,” when it came to the decades-long dilemma and that Mexican officials needed to commit to solving the problem once and for all. The strident messaging seemed to be music to the ears of even wary Democratic Congressmembers in attendance. “We have a lot of hope at the moment,” said Juan Vargas, whose congressional district runs along the U.S.-Mexico border and includes some of the areas hardest hit by the crisis.
Plus: National City’s ouster of its city manager inspired some pushback.
Song of the Week
Some songs make you feel at peace. Others make you feel overwhelmed. Still others make you feel a sense of baffled awe. Fistfights With Wolves’ 2023 album, “The Sheep that Eats the Wolf,” features a whole slate of songs that make you feel all of the above and so much more. That’s no surprise coming from a band that for more than a decade has specialized in deliciously intricate genre-bending tunes.
Fistfights With Wolves, “The Sheep that Eats the Wolf”: As the tension in “The Sheep that Eats the Wolf,” slowly builds, and the piano devolves into a dizzyingly discordant scatter, and two voices materialize in sharp bursts, one gets the distinct feeling that something could explode at any moment. Then, it sort of does. The whole mixture feels equal parts magical and ominous, equal parts orchestral and chaotic.
Like what you hear? Check out Fistfights with Wolves at Soda Bar on Saturday, April 26.
Do you have a “Song of the Week” suggestion? Shoot us an email and a sentence or two about why you’ve been bumping this song lately. Friendly reminder: all songs should be by local artists!
In Other News
- San Diego’s turning over a new leaf. On Tuesday, San Diego’s City Council unanimously voted to ditch the former city flower, a non-native carnation, in favor of the native western blue-eyed grass. (City News Service)
- More than 200 leaders of universities like Harvard, Yale, Cornell and Princeton signed an open letter expressing opposition to “undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.” The letter, which comes as the Trump administration continues to crack down on colleges nationwide, was also signed by the leaders of two local universities – the University of San Diego and the California Western School of Law.
- As CBS 8 reports, the San Diego City Council on Tuesday approved a contract with nonprofit Jewish Family Service of San Diego to run a safe parking lot for homeless residents living in cars. The city hopes to open the new lot in early May but as our Lisa Halverstadt recently reported, it’s got a legal hurdle to cross first.
- San Diego’s Civic Theatre is in the midst of a $7.5 million remodel that will bring everything from new restroom stalls to a new lobby to downtown’s aging arts-hub. (Union-Tribune)
The Morning Report was written by Jim Hinch and Jakob McWhinney. It was edited by Andrea Lopez-Villafaña.