OC GOP Chairman Lies Again About Adam Nick, Lake Forest's City Councilman (Part 1)

First, Fred J. Whitaker’s law firm lied about Adam Nick in court.

Then, Whitaker lied about Adam Nick during the recall of Lake Forest’s “Gang of 3” City Councilmen.

Now, Whitaker has lied again while calling on Nick to resign as Lake Forest City Councilman.

That’s what transpired Monday in the latest political gamesmanship being employed by partisan government “leaders” over a non-partisan office. Whitaker is trying to protect his golden-haired boy, Dwight Robinson.

Why would Whitaker, already proven to be part of the team of cronies protecting each other in Lake Forest, make such a move?

Because he’s part of the problem with local government, because he’s not as smart as he thinks he is, and because he’s trying to pull the wool over the eyes of Lake Forest residents. Again.

Not coincidentally, Whitaker’s grand but impotent gesture came on the eve of Nick calling upon his City Council colleagues to censure Councilman Dwight Robinson for lying on his official candidate statement in advance of the November election.

Whitaker, who is chairman of the dying Orange County Republican Party, is no doubt trying to deflect attention from Robinson, whose integrity will be challenged at tonight’s City Council meeting (City Hall, 7 p.m.) over untrue statements he made, including that he had a hand in eliminating Mello Roos taxes in Portola Hills and that his Lake Forest business employs “nearly 100 Southern Californians.”

In fact, Mello Roos taxes were not eliminated, but were retired after they were paid in full by residents, and Robinson’s Lake Forest business is a home-based business that sources report as having only two employees.

Whitaker’s statement seems to make good on Mayor Andrew Hamilton’s threat. When it was proposed last month by Nick that Robinson’s lies on the candidate statement – which is mailed to every voter in Lake Forest – Hamilton suggested to Nick that he might want to re-think the idea of a censure because of “glass houses.”As mayor, Hamilton delayed the censure discussion by two weeks, reducing the time voters can consider -- or hear about -- such a sanction.

Nick was censured previously for removing three campaign signs that were placed in illegal locations by Hamilton, Scott Voigts and water district candidate Jose Vergara even though Nick had not broken any law (charges against him were dropped), had not yet received due process by the court, and by the mere suggestion by Robinson that Nick had used a racial slur.

Robinson overheard the alleged slur as he walked past a parking lot conversation Nick had with two others; both those men made public statements before the Council that Nick had not used the word Robinson claimed he overheard about a year earlier. Still, Hamilton, who was newly elected and was endorsed by Robinson, and Voigts, who Robinson had once served as campaign manager, voted for the censure of Nick despite a lack of evidence.

The timing of Whitaker’s statement – which is filled with inaccuracies – is similar to the misdirection play that Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts used when Portola Hills and Foothill Ranch residents began their recall of the three men. Rather than answer any of the charges against them, which included not placing on the agenda the dangerous Saddleback Ranch Road (it was immediately agendized and acted on following the service of recall papers), Robinson, Voigts and Hamilton backed a smear campaign against Nick and the residents of Lake Forest, inaccurately claiming he was behind the recall, and engaging in made-up schoolyard rhetoric that played on the threat of terrorism and accused supporters of being thugs and pedophiles.

No doubt, the call to resign is meant to detract from the issue at hand: Robinson’s untruthful ballot statement.

For all his posturing about integrity and ethics, Whitaker – who is an attorney -- should probably be forced to explain why there are so many inaccuracies in his own press release. However, the recall wasn’t even the first time Whitaker’s team lied about Nick. When Whitaker’s law firm, Cummins & White, was brought aboard to defend the city in Nick’s suit, which eventually led to the City changing its laws to eliminate backroom deals with multi-national corporations and level the playing field for small businesses, Cummins & White submitted false information that Nick had applied and been turned down (page 2, section 1) for the same waiver that the City had granted to 7-Eleven, thereby giving the impression to the court that Nick’s case was simply a case of sour grapes. Yet City Clerk Stephanie Smith confirmed that Nick never applied for the waiver.

Now, as if Whitaker can’t get enough of the councilman who was elected in 2012 with a platform of cleaning up City Hall – and was the leading vote-getter – Whitaker is at it again.

Whitaker has asked for Adam Nick’s resignation while at the same time supporting a Lake Forest City Council candidate who endorsed racist, xenophobic diatribes, lies, and half-truths who wrongfully called his constituents thugs and pedophiles, and didn’t follow through on a single campaign promise despite being in the council majority for four years. Yes, that's Robinson.

Whitaker’s press release on Monday was nothing more than a grandstand gesture in an attempt to undermine Nick and in hopes of taking away the attention aimed at Robinson for lying to voters on his candidate statement, which is an official document unlike the third-party website in which Whitaker is basing his “proof.”

The only proof is that Whitaker is lying to the people of Lake Forest as much as Robinson is.

Let’s break down the press release that came from the Orange County GOP on Monday calling for Nick's resignation.

It states: The Republican Party of Orange County called on Lake Forest City Councilman Adam Nick to resign today amid revelations that he fraudulently claimed to be a Certified Public Accountant and recently offered to resign his seat if it could be proven that he wasn’t a licensed CPA.

The facts: Nick has never claimed to be a CPA. He has claimed that he successfully passed the CPA Board Exam. He never offered to resign his seat if it could be proven that he wasn’t a licensed CPA. He offered to resign his seat if anyone anywhere could provide anything written by him in which he claimed he was a CPA.

It states: “The most important duty of every elected official is to preserve the public trust,” said Chairman Fred Whitaker said. “Adam Nick breached that trust in a very serious way when he willfully misrepresented his credentials.”

The facts: It is interesting that Whitaker would actually say Nick “willfully misrepresented his credentials” when Robinson – whom Whitaker pushed and promoted for a position on the Air Quality Management Control District, thereby giving Whitaker’s Republican party a majority on that governing commission – when Robinson very clearly misrepresented his accomplishments at least twice on an actual government document that is mailed to every registered voter in the city.

Preserving the public trust is the campaign platform Nick used when he ran for City Council in 2012; he wanted to clean up City Hall. Nick made, basically, six campaign promises and followed through on bringing all of them before the Council. By contrast, Robinson made seven campaign promises in the same election season and didn’t bring any of them before the Council – and even voted against some of his campaign promises. As for willfully misrepresenting his credentials, the so-called CPA information does not appear on Nick’s official candidate statement from 2012. Nick has never claimed to be a CPA, only that he scored 90 percent on the test.

It states: Adam Nick claimed on his campaign website that he was a CPA. The California Board of Accountancy (CBA) notified Adam Nick through an official letter that it had no record of ever issuing a CPA license to him. To view the letter, please click here.

The facts: Nick never made such a claim on his campaign website. The website in question is a third party website that is neither Nick’s nor the City of Lake Forest’s. It includes conformed bullet point profiles of candidates with their photos claiming to be from the candidates. After receiving a complaint from an anonymous person, the CBA sent a letter to Nick, curiously addressed to him at City Hall so that it became a matter of public record, advising him that it had no record of him being a CPA. A Public Records Act request to the City for the letter was immediately made, again by an anonymous requester by the name of LFTruth, the pseudonym for a commenter on Patch; Nick said during a Council meeting that Hamilton was LFTruth, which Hamilton did not deny. Hamilton is a CPA.

Next: In Part 2, we examine the second half of the press release.

About the author: Martin Henderson won several Los Angeles and Orange County press club awards while an editor at Patch in 2012-13.