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DOJ investigating Congresswoman Lois Capps’ office

June 9, 2014
Raymond Morua and Lois Capps

Raymond Morua and Lois Capps

The day before one of Congresswoman Lois Capps’ former representatives was sentenced in a fatal DUI accident, DOJ and FBI agents were interviewing sources regarding wrongdoing by Capps’ district director. [PeterLance]

On May 27, Marquest J. Meeks, a Public Integrity trial attorney from Washington and two Santa Maria FBI agents interviewed Teresa Montoya, the former fiancé of Raymond Morua. After interviewing Montoya for about an hour and a half, the three investigators interviewed Morua in the Santa Barbara County Jail in the presence of his attorney Darryl Genis.

Last week, FBI agents continued their investigation and interviewed Morua’s mother Rose Saucedo.

The investigation was prompted by a series of articles by investigative reporter Peter Lance that focused on an alleged attempt by Mollie Culver, the District Director for Capps, to get Morua out of town following the fatal DUI hit-and-run that killed Mallory Dies in December. Culver allegedly forged two separate Department of Veterans Affairs’ forms in a scheme to get Morua out of jail and into a VA-funded treatment facility.

On May 28, Morua plead guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to twenty years to life.

If Culver is convicted of making material misstatements of fact on the VA benefits form, she could face up to five years in prison.


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I have been a supporter of Lois Capps for decades. When I was on the SB Democratic Central Committee we were fortunate enough to have the Capps open up their home for our fundraisers. My daughter and the Capps’ daughter were friends in high school.


That being said, I am glad a serious investigation is underway. I hope it is a rock-solid investigation, with no stone is left unturned.


If she is found guilty of cover-up of a vehicular manslaughter , I will be devastated because it means she had such poor decision-making skills and lack of ethics that she is not fit for office.


I will be devastated if that happens, and I really hope it doesn’t.


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Mary, your stance is exactly how I feel; Ms. Capps knows better than to have someone in her office break the law in pursuit of putting another person from her staff in a position to minimize their legal exposure, and if it is determined that it did happen as was reported in the series of articles, then I too will feel a sense of loss that Lois Capps either allowed all of this to happen or she had people working for her that felt they could break the law and get away with it. As I stated before, let’s wait for all of the facts to come in and withhold making a judgement on the situation until everything has been laid out on the table.


And again, my condolences to the family of the young woman who was killed, I am sorry for your loss.


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With Eric Holder in charge, what could go wrong?


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POLITICS, can make normal even nice people mean! Nothing was done that was wrong! We’ll all know this very soon!


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You don’t call drinking, driving and killing someone wrong?????


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INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY; In America, our standard of justice requires that anyone suspected of committing a crime, anyone arrested for committing a crime is given the full benefit of the law; we do not convict people before an investigation has concluded and the evidence has been presented to jury of twelve regular people listening to the evidence being presented by a prosecutor, argued against by a defense attorney, and given instructions by a judge presiding over the presentation of the trial. Some times innocent people are convicted, some times guilty people get away scot free, but in a majority of times, the justice system does seem to work, so let’s wait until the investigation is done, the evidence is presented and the trial (if there is one) is over. If someone in Lois Capps’ office broke the law and is convicted, they will pay a price. To assume any guilt before all the evidence is presented is un-American, period.


Oh yeah, sometimes there isn’t a trial because the suspect takes a guilty plea and is then sentenced without the cost of a trial. I suggest we all wait and see what happens before jumping on the bandwagon to declare that everyone who works in politics is somehow guilty of corruption or thinks they can break the law and get away with it.


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“Innocent until proven guilty” only applies in a court of law. In the court of public opinion, anything goes. How many times do I have to explain this?


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bobfromsanluis – I am willing to bet you a buck that they will find criminal wrongdoing and that the majority of voters in Ms. Capp’s district won’t give a hoot. You see, the retired West Los Angelenos of Santa Barbara are scratching their heads wondering what Capps office did wrong.


Pay a Latino $36K a year – crazy money

Forge a document – of course, he was in jail and we needed to get him out of town

Hire the guy because of the color of his skin and his ability to get my maid to vote for her. Makes sense.


I’ll bet you an additional dollar that Culver takes the fall and gets a stern warning. She will be then be recommended for a position on the UC Regents or if she gets time, a professorship at a state college.


Call me a cynic, but I’ve got my two bucks ready for you to take.


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In my experience, Lois Capps is not the type to hire to get racial brownie points.


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Just to get Democrate brownie points


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“What difference, at this point, does it make now?”


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Hey! I was going to say that!


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Maybe before the November elections…….???


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That was the old lawyer tactic from Hillary. Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz shares with his students a strategy for successfully defending cases. If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law If neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table.


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There are not enough investigators to be able to dent all the corruption and graft that the politicians get away with every day!


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Wait…The DOJ? Holders DOJ? Obama’s DOJ will investigate a Democrat? Where did I put that laugh track?


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Hey! I was going to say that!


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Is Capps even alive? I swear, she looks like a skeleton with skin stretched over it.


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Brain dead for years….


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How much do you want to bet that there will be no indictments, regardless of any wrongdoing found by the FBI.


We have a Justice Department that selectively enforces laws. Lois and her ilk have a get out of jail free card for the next 2 years for any federal prosecution.


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Let’s wait and see before jumping to conclusions. I will admit to a similar distrust of the Justice Dept. but sometimes they will act against a “supporter” especially if the evidence is strong and the supporter is relatively weak in a political sense. (It can be used as “evidence” that they are impartial.)


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WHAT on earth good would this be? I am so sad for the woman who died and her family and friends. My heart is broken for them, but going after people who are in Representative Lois Capps office is a witch hunt. This is an awful situation and the man responsible has been tried and convicted. The tragedy has involved so many people and hurt enough people. Let it go!


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This is a very sad story. However, your response just adds to this tragedy. So this “witch hunt” aka referred to as a possible cover up should not be investigated to get to the truth because it involves a democrat. We all know that you would not feel this way if this was a republican. Leave the politic out of it and seek the truth, was there a cover up or not. We have a legal justice system, as weak and broken as it is by the justice department, so it play out.


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it’s a common statement by some… an investigation about my “favorite” person is always a which hunt, and investigation about someone not on my side is “the peoples right to know the truth”……


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Our Nation is divided- half Patriots and half traitors- and not one among us can tell the difference.


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I think the breakdown is more like 1/4 patriots, 1/4 traitors and 1/2 clueless brain-deads.


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Extremist views about those with which you disagree are a big part of the problem. Even assuming that your views are both correct and reasonable, someone who disagrees may have good reasons too and they may be in agreement with you on other topics. Don’t make the mistake of substituting simplistic labels for thorough understanding.


That said, I would venture that the breakdown is not between patriots (most people are patriots in attitude) and traitors (very few regard themselves as traitors) but between WELL-informed citizens (<20%) and those that either don't spend the time to get informed (.40%) or rely on less-than-honest sources for their information (~40%).


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matriots rise up.


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If I had not been paraphrasing Mark Twain, maybe I could see six peoplethumbing down the comment. Thumbs down to humorous or thought provoking ideas! I want to stay in my echo chamber where everyone agrees with me.


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It may be a statement made by some, but not by anyone with ethics.


It is hard to remain ethical, applying your own ethical rules without prejudice, especially when it is your own sacred cow getting kicked in the kiester, but to fail to do so would endanger your own sense of ethics.


And without ethics, can there be anything of any value left in you?


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I would bet you have the same feeling about finding truth about Benghazi?


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Yeah “What difference, at this point, does it make?”


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The truth about the death of several US citizens isn’t worth finding out????


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Bergdahl truth!


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Seriously? Are you such a sycophant that you would brush over a possible criminal coverup by your electected representative just because she has a “D” after her name? And don’t give me the nonsense disclaimer about your heart being broken. You don’t know any of them. You, like any thinking, feeling human is merely saddened.


If you read the deeply researched articles by Peter Lance you cannot but come up with these conclusions:


1 Morua had booze issues which were ignored by the Capps camp because he was both Latino and a veteran.

2 The Capps camp sprung into damage control to get Morua out of town ASAP including forging documents.

3 After the death, there was no way to get Morua out of jail so they dropped their Latino war vet like a rock.


So I ask you Secretary Clinton…erm…fishing village, doesn’t it bother you that your elected representative’s organization would hire someone just because of his race and war record only to punt him when his liabilities over weighed his assets? Lois lied, people died.


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Oh, and may I add, Mrs. Capp’s was paying her Latino vet $36K a year to work for her in Santa Barbara. No wonder she is for open borders.


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Whether or not she (not just her staff) was involved in a coverup is a question worth some research. However, Morua was a vet and very likely a citizen as well. Your implied assumption that he was an illegal immigrant is baseless unless you have evidence to the contrary. If she is to be criticized for her hiring practices it should be for hiring someone with known alcohol problems not for hiring someone of Latino ancestry.


I am waiting to see how much Capps knew and when she knew it about Morua. Did she have any significant say in his hiring or did she leave it to her staff? At what point (if any) did she become involved in his situation after the “accident?” Did she make decisions based on accurate information or was she fed half-truths by someone on her staff? I am not going to vote for her anyway but I don’t like this trend of making assumptions without the facts in order to score political points. If the GOP/conservatives don’t exhibit some restraint about unsupported accusations, they can still lose my vote even if it doesn’t go to Capps.


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Fishing village, you’re sounding al little bit like Hillary Clinton….Ur what does it matter now, remember Benghazi FOUR people dead. It matters, human lives matter.


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remember Bergdahl


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Are you talking about the deserter…. several of his brave “brothers” died trying to locate his sorry ass. Yeah once again “it matters” people need to know the truth especially the family of these brave soldiers


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we will wait and see.


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Lois Capps is not Hilary Clinton.


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Obviously everyone should know that it takes a village, a fishing village no less to provide a smoke screen for the latest cover-up


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Hilarious! First time on CCN I have seen a comment hidden. This must have been a real dumb one.


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CCN does this all the time, go back to the hidden post, click on it and you can dumb down on the content


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when a comment gets a certain number of down votes it disappears (until you click to read it)


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