Jeff Nielsen is a conservative guy

CORRUPTION sure is a drag.

In Orange County, we’ve got lots of corruption. All kinds.

For instance, we’ve got a Republican Mafia, a secretive group of Karl Rovian thugs who make life difficult for decent Republicans. These mafiosi pretty much do as they please around here.

And when things get hot, they sure know how to cool off, boy. They're amazing!

You remember our big OC priest scandal. GOP names—Tom Fuentes, et al.—kept popping up in that one. It looked bad, and, as litigation moved forward, it seemed that it could only get worse, much worse.

Well, no. It took $100 million, but "they" (the Diocese, I suppose, which has long had very close ties with the OC GOP) definitely put a lid on it. The truth is in there, under that lid, but we’re never gonna see it, that's for darned sure. (See Gustavo Arellano's Boy-buggering bingo.)

Recently, the Sheriff’s ex-best pal, former Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo, was convicted of various corrupt deeds. (See County of lights, county of magic.) He didn't seem to get much of a sentence: one year. That seemed odd.

Years ago, at the beginning of that case, it sure looked like Jaramillo was gonna spill the beans—about his corrupt boss and who-knows-who-else. But, in the end, no beans.

The OC Republican mafia’s got a farm system, you know. They find young men and put their patrician hands on those young shoulders. “Let me help,” they say.

“Really? You wanna help little ol’ me?”

“Why, yes, young man! Let’s go to the spa and talk about it!”


Jeffrey Nielsen was such a young man. According to the OC Weekly (R. Scott Moxley's Boy crazy), back in 1996, then-25-year-old Nielsen was being mentored by some local GOPers. That, at any rate, is the impression left by letters printed by the Weekly and allegedly written at the time by Nielsen to a young boy in Virginia. (The boy, now an adult, reportedly asserts that, when he was in 7th and 8th grade, Nielsen had sex with him.)

In a letter dated October, Nielsen reportedly wrote the boy:

It was really nice to get a letter from you and for you to call me….

So, here’s what’s going on with me. On Friday, Tom Fuentes (the chairman of the OC Republican Party) called me and wanted me to meet him at Macy’s at South Coast Plaza. I got there and he bought me a suit. Then he took me to dinner and the sauna at the ritzy Balboa Bay Club. [Name deleted] told me he likes to reward hard-working young Republicans that he likes and he knows are going to go far. It was really rewarding.

As you know, I’ve been working really hard on the Scott Baugh campaign…. [Baugh is the current OC GOP chairman.] The only time I’m not working is when I’m watching a USC game, at church, asleep or writing you . . . or trying to get my law school applications together. I’ve got both my USC and Chapman applications typed. I’m working on getting all of my Letters of Recommendation together now. I’ve got Rohrabacher, Flanagan and Fuentes done. Today I found out that this guy who is the state chair of the Republican Party, Mike Schroeder (a friend of Rohrabacher) [Schroeder is the current kingpin of the Republican mafia], would also write me a letter of rec. It’s really good that he does because he’s on the board of trustees at USC Law School.

—Wait a minute. Tom Fuentes? Is that the same Tom Fuentes who, these days, serves on the SOCCCD board of trustees? Our Tom Fuentes? The pious and Spain-hating Tom Fuentes?

Why, yes it is. But Tom likes to mentor. Does it all the time. Apparently, Tom’s mentoring of young Jeff later blossomed into friendship or something. According to a Moxley article from late ’05 (Nambla fantasy), “More than once, Fuentes…visited Casa de Nielsen for parties.”

Eventually, Scott Baugh got Nielsen a job with fancy Irvine law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. Then (says the Weekly), in 2003, “Nielsen was arrested…for allegedly molesting a Westminster High School freshman boy and possessing a huge, illegal cache of man-boy pornography.”

That can’t be good.

After several (suspicious) delays, the trial finally got under way a few days ago. 'Bout time!

The first to report on it was—who else?—the OC Weekly’s R. Scott Moxley (Imaginary teen sex?, Feb. 22):

A frowning Paul Meyer, defense lawyer for accused child molester Jeffrey Ray Nielsen, stood before the jury during opening statements this week…His client—a onetime congressional intern and aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher—is not just innocent but a victim, he said. Meyer pounded his finger on the podium and railed about the “audacity” of the prosecutor introducing a small sampling of the hundreds of man-boy sex pictures Nielsen possessed at his home.

“Those pictures have nothing to do with this case,” said Meyer, who fought to keep the jury from seeing the child pornography by arguing there is a “dissimilarity” between possessing kiddie porn and molesting youngsters.

Besides, said Meyer, Nielsen is no freak. “Don’t be misled,” he told the jury. “Jeff Nielsen is a conservative guy, responsible, caring and very family-oriented. He cares about people.”

…Deputy District Attorney Dan Hess began the Feb. 22 trial by explaining that Nielsen, 36, “actively sought out a boy, pursued this boy to carry out his own sexual perversion” on a 14-year-old freshman at Westminster High School…“The defendant is free to do what he wants, but not with a 14-year-old boy,” said Hess, who noted that a minor cannot legally consent to have sex with an adult in California.

…The defense version is that Nielsen was startled at the boy’s age when they met, resisted the boy’s sexual passes and chose instead to mentor him because, as Meyer claimed, “he’s a kid who is out of control . . . wanting to run away from home . . . suicidal . . . hating his life.”….

Nielsen is a “successful lawyer,” USC graduate, home owner and BMW driver who loves his dog “Page,” Meyer often noted for the Newport Beach jury. What, he asked, would he see in a boy who “lives in a Westminster trailer park”?....

—A day later (Friday), the LA Times weighed in (Molestation trial begins for lawyer with ties to O.C. power):

Accused of molesting a 14-year-old boy he met over the Internet, a former aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and onetime intern at the Orange County district attorney's office was portrayed Thursday by a prosecutor as a man who repeatedly preyed on a minor for sex.

…Nielsen's trial opened in a Newport Beach courtroom nearly four years after he was arrested…The case might have received little attention if not for Nielsen's connections to Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and other influential members of the local Republican Party.

As first reported by the OC Weekly, Nielsen was an aide at Rohrabacher's Washington, D.C., office in the mid-1990s, a period during which the congressman and GOP power brokers Tom Fuentes and Michael Schroeder provided character references to USC Law School on his behalf. Nielsen's father, Ben, is a former Fountain Valley mayor.

….[Deputy District Attorney Dan] Hess displayed blown-up copies of e-mails between Nielsen and Doe, which, he said, corroborate the allegations and show that Nielsen pursued the relationship after Doe told him he wanted to end it and find someone closer to his age. Hess closed by handing each juror a folder containing copies of five images of child pornography he said were found on Nielsen's computers.

Taking umbrage at that move, defense attorney Paul S. Meyer asked the judge for special permission to start his opening statement before the recess that is typically given after the prosecution opens the case…"The reason I didn't want to take a break is because a picture is worth a thousand words," he said, urging jurors to ask themselves, "Why are we looking at these photos?"….

The accuser is expected to take the stand next week.

—OK, I'VE GOT A PREDICTION. Nielsen may or may not be convicted. But, conviction or no, we’re never gonna learn much about Nielsen's interesting life with the boys of the good old OC Republican Party. That’s for damn sure.