Fiedler Given Delay to Plead, Attacks Reiner

Citing a need to study grand jury transcripts and to plot strategy, attorneys for Rep. Bobbi Fiedler and her chief aide won a delay today in entering pleas to charges that the pair tried to pay off state Sen. Ed Davis to drop out of the Republican U.S. Senate primary with a $100,000 contribution.

Outside the downtown Criminal Courthouse, Fiedler, indicted by the Los Angeles County Grand Jury last week, declared, “I’m innocent of any wrongdoing.” A Feb. 7 arraignment date for entering pleas was set by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Aurelio Munoz for Fiedler, 48, and her aide, Paul Clarke, 39.

A Reiner ‘Diversion’

Fiedler accused Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner of ulterior motives in pursuing the indictment. She said Reiner had used her case as a distraction from the dismissal of charges against five of seven defendants in the highly publicized McMartin Pre-School molestation case.

“I think this situation is a political ploy on his part. This was a way of diverting attention from what he had done in McMartin. It was a convenience vehicle,” Fiedler told reporters.

She said Davis, too, had political motives for his part in the case being made against her.

“I really am very much perplexed by someone who I worked with in the past, whose daughter’s wedding I went to . . . that he would go to such an extreme to knock me out of a political race which was going very well for me . . . the desperate nature of such an individual.”