Fullerton City Councilman and immigration fraud, “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra always has an interest in his own self-interest, clothing his own interest in verbiage that makes it seems he loves all mankind, especially the “underserved.”
But Zahra is often motivated by jealousy and vindictiveness, the main target being his nemesis – the Bushala family. Hence his sudden interest in leases of city-owned property. He got it all wrong, of course, but not for lack of trying to hurt the Bushala’s in their lease agreement at the Santa Fe Depot.
Always game day in Fullerton…
At the end of the last council’s discussion on the noise ordinance Zahra was heard to mutter loud enough to be overheard: “Bushala wins again.” What Bushala was supposed to have “won” is unclear, since a decent noise ordinance that would actually be enforced, is in everybody’s interest – except those scofflaw “clubs” orchestrating the decibel free-for-all to the detriment of genuine restaurants and nearby residents.
If the proper draft ordinance decided by the council majority had been prepared, it would have been approved that night.
I sometimes fight for transparency!
Here in the hallowed halls of FFFF HQ, we’ve been wondering aloud how long it would be before Zahra, Ezekiel Manassero and the rest of the Fullerton Observer claque would begin to orchestrate a nuisance opposition when the item comes back to council, with draft ordinance, on October 7th. The over-under is tomorrow at noon.
Oraganizing this may be a tough row to hoe for the ever-delinquent damascene doctor.
Sure, the usual crowd of nincompoops and boobs will rail against the council majority like they always do. Who cares? Will any of the noise pollution makers show up to claim innocence, poverty, government overreach, or some other lamentation? They didn’t appear last time to support the “it’s not broke and we won’t fix it, anyhow” strategy of Community Development Director Sunaya Thomas. I’d love to attach some names and faces to the perpetrators of nuisance blasting noise.
Anyway, the over-under at FFFF about when we will first see the opposition is sometime tomorrow. Any takers?
In 2018 Ahmad Zahra, the immigration fraud and woman batterer and plagiarist popped up out of nowhere, an unknown, and got himself elected the D5 councilman in a split race.
Is he returning to that anonymous swamp from whence he emerged?
His candidate committee for re-election in 2026 is now listed on the City Clerk’s inactive committee page. I don’t know how or why it is there instead of on the active committee page. Could it be that the Deadbeat Damascene Doctor is giving up on Fullerton politics? Maybe the Kennedy Sisters will let us know.
Zahra’s political departure, if true, is a pleasant thought.
How dare you question my story!
For almost seven years we’ve been putting up with his lies, his manipulations, his machinations and his saccharine, high handed sanctimony. He has been so unpopular with a majority of his colleagues that they have continually denied him the mayorship, something he has obviously coveted so as to burnish his political reputation. Good job, too. He filed a false police report against one of them and has denigrated them in his frequent moods of high dudgeon.
It’s possible that Zahra sees no political future, given the gay man’s phony Green Card marriage to an Arkansas woman has been discovered and would obviously play a prominent part in a 2026 campaign. He spent well over $100,000 to keep his $800 per month gig in 2022 and only won because OC Dem Central created a fake Latino candidate to siphon votes away from Oscar Valadez. And this was before the marriage fraud was discovered. Thin ice, indeed.
Bushala says stop!
Zahra also knows that his malevolence directed at the Bushala family is reciprocated, and that Tony Bushala has the means and the motive to finally get rid of this creep. The fact that Mr. Valadez says he is running again must be a problem for the Middle Eastern man of medicine.
Fullerton Boohoo has clasped the prevaricating fraud to its collective bosom, believing all the tripe he dishes out to them. This won’t help him stay elected.
Soon we will find out if Zahra is leaving, going back to his “day job” (whatever that job may be) full time. Or maybe we will learn that a clerical error by the “new crew” has been made, assigning his committee to the inactive list.
FFFF has been notified that a complaint against serial prevaricator and immigration fraud Ahmad Zahra has been lodged with the California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC).
Although I don’t have a copy of the complaint yet, the gist of it is that for years Zahra has been identifying the Capital One Bank in the City of Industry as a “payee” for all sorts of non-related campaign expenses. These include travel(?), web service and office expenses.
I decided to check out Mr. Zahra’s campaign expenses just for the first half of 2025. He listed only two payees:
Sure enough, there’s Capital One Bank. $2329, under the heading of OFC – Office Expenses. Office expenses? So where, exactly is Zahra’s campaign office? In his little apartment by the freeway? Someplace else? That’s a lot of paper clips and staples.
Comically, Zahra’s campaign “office expenses” brought him in exactly $0 in the first two quarters of this year, a fairly damning indictment of his business acumen, at best. Zero.
So I went back a few years for fun. Here’s an entry from 2020:
Sure enough, here’s Zahra using Capital One, City of Industry as a payee for IT expenses. Here are some more:
The Bank is listed as payee for IT expenses, and meeting attendance? Huh?
When he was running for re-election in 2022 Zahra was really casting his campaign bread on the waters. But a lot of the water was murky. One example listed the bank as payee for civic donations! To whom? What for? Who Knows? Big secret.
All of Zahra’s other Capital One “expenses” in 2022 were split among various FPPC codes, including more expensive travel, hiding the true nature of these expenses, and who he really paid.
A cynical person might conclude that Zahra has been deliberately hiding his real campaign financial activity for almost seven years. But why? Have any of these payments gone to personally support Zahra himself? Maybe the FPPC can find out.
Sometimes fights for transparency.
And maybe Young Elijah Manassero, the young ethics crusader will dig deep into this mess.
Ahmad and Tammi. One of these people appears to be grossly incompetent. The other is a a non-stop liar.
And by the way, who is “Tammi McIntyre” who is signing off on this as Zahra’s treasurer and why on earth is she submitting this junk to the City Clerk? Is Tammi McIntyre in on something, um, untoward? Could be.
By the way AI coughed up this when I inquired about Capital One Bank, City of Industry:
AI says: Capital One has a presence in the City of Industry, California, specifically for auto loan payments. The address for mailing auto loan payments is: Capital One Auto Finance, P.O. Box 60511, City of Industry, CA 91716.
At Tuesday’s Fullerton City Council meeting both Ahmad Zahra and Shanna Charles went to great lengths to decry the current rampage of ICE goons in our community. While there should be no support for the current administration’s unconstitutional activities anyplace, Zahra’s oratory struck me as ironic.
Poor Michelle. Abandoned by her once loving husband…
How come? Because we know that the openly gay, Zahra came to America from somewhere in the mid 1990s and immediately hoofed it on down to Arkansas where he married an American female, a woman named Michelle Salmon. Zahra told Vern Nelson of the Orange Juice blog that they liked each other but it didn’t work out.
From beautiful Arkansas
That was a Zahra lie.
The illegal marriage fraud scam did work out, just as planned.
Just contemplate the ridiculousness: here’s a new, gay immigrant without his own address and with no work permit. What a catch for the young Arkansan woman.
Filmmaker. Every immigrant’s dream!
Very soon after Zahra’s nuptials, he lit out for California to pursue his dream of becoming a filmmaker, abandoning his new bride in Little Rock. Five years or so later Zahra divorced Salmon, and with the help of a green card, no doubt, stayed in the country paving the way for ultimate citizenship.
Most immigrants that come here are damn hard working people doing jobs that Americans have become unwilling to do. Zahra, on the other hand appears to be virtually unemployed. Check out his 2023 economic interest Form 700, for example.
It looks as if Ahmad is doing a lot more political schmoozing and manipulating than he has been actively engaged in gainful employment. For a while he was collecting four grand a month going to Orange County Water District meetings, but that gravy train came to a screeching halt four years ago. It’s anybody’s guess how he pays his rent. A real audit of his campaign finances might be useful.
Could be. He’s done it before by posing as the author of crap written by an Orange County Water District PR employee.
This time is different. Now an article purportedly written by Zahra is about making Big Oil pay for stuff in California because of climate crisis that has ruined peoples’ “worlds” (no examples are given).
It’s sort of funny in an odd way to think that anybody might care about Zahra’s opinion on environmental issues, but the malignant narcissist never stops to consider his own small importance.
What stood out to me is that the articles sure looks a lot like it was written by an AI program. It has that same stilted language and repetition of phrases that makes you think of a high schooler’s homework that has been strung out with useless verbiage to make the minimum page requirement. I’ve become pretty adept at recognizing AI fluff stuff, and this sure looks like it.
As a supposed doctor of something (although no license, no practice, no patients, no research, no income) we might expect Zahra to write his own aricle for Observer at least once.
But I’ll ad this. The Observer has never been known for good or even competent writing, so there’s that.
We apologize for the misleading video that was previously released. The videographer was under the influence of marijuana when editing the footage, which resulted in a misrepresentation of Ahmad Zahra’s comments regarding his relationship with the marijuana union boss, Derrick Smith.
4F sincerely apologizes for any harm this may have caused or any unintended consequences that have arisen. We are committed to improving our processes moving forward.
The former videographer has since moved on to bigger and more exciting projects. He is now producing his own show, which promises to feature an episode highlightingPapuan Highlands tribe Headman, B’rni “Barney” Wewak.
Few things rival the spectacle of two so called “doctors” confidently speaking from, well, less-than-expert territory.
During last night’s (6-3-25) Fullerton City Council meeting, George A. Bushala raised a pressing question: Why did Councilwoman Shanna Charles’ husband, Andre, receive $4,000 from the marijuana union lobby, UFCW, during the 2024 District 4 election? The answer may be connected to the lobbying group’s substantial $60,000 investment, yes, a staggering SIXTY THOUSAND DOLLARS aimed at securing the failed election of pro-marijuana candidate Vivian “Cannabis Kitty” Jaramillo to the Fullerton City Council.
On Tuesday April 15th, George A. Bushala took to the council chamber podium to again confront Councilman “Dr.” Ahmad Zahra about previous claims made by the Dubious Damascene Doctor.
That man is defaming me!!
In this case, Bushala reminded everyone that Zahra had previously claimed he had been “exonerated” in the assault and battery case against “Monica F.” he was charged with by the District Attorney in 2020. He made this claim from the council dais itself.
Naturally, Zahra has never provided the public with a shred of evidence of this so called exoneration, something that should be simple to do, since if it were true he would certainly have some notification of such by the DA.
Now we know two things about these sorts of legal proceedings. First, law enforcement may drop a case, but it never exculpates anybody, primarily because it can’t do such a thing. Second we also know that first time offenders can plead guilty and have their records whitewashed.
Mr. Bushala is perfectly right in challenging Zahra to prove his exoneration if such a thing ever really happened (or at the very least show proof that the case was dropped). Failing that Fullerton residents are justified in concluding that Zahra was not exonerated, or even cleared of charges, but instead pleaded guilty to get his record sealed.
I get the feeling that for Mr. Bushala the enmity that Zahra has shown his family is not going to fly anymore without considerable pushback. There is still a lot Zahra needs to answer for, and since the Fullerton Observer Kennedy Sisters are perfectly willing to take him at his duplicitous word, questions will continue to be raised about his fitness for office.
Yesterday FFFF related the story of how Fullerton Councilmember Ahmad Zahra got rid of his Planning Commissioner Arif Mansuri for some young guy named Adrian Meza. In effect, the Planning Commission lost a professional engineer and would have gained a political wannabe whose day job is “marketing” for a fertility clinic that gets gay male couples children.
Mansuri ain’t buying it.
It turns out that Mr. Mansuri still wants to serve his fellow Fullerton citizens and Councilmember Jamie Valencia thought that was a good idea. So at the January 21, 2025 Council meeting she expressed her intention to nominate Mansuri for the Traffic and Circulation Commission. That item came up on the February 4th, 2025 council agenda – Item 3.
What’s of interest here is that Zahra voted no on Item 3, that included Mansuri’s ratification to the T&C Commission.
I will get what I want, one way or another…
What’s the big deal you ask?
Well, for starters it’s highly unusual for one councilmember to vote against a nomination made by one of his colleagues, particularly one who is more qualified than most Fullerton commission appointees. In Fullerton such things have always been considered bad form; in this case especially, since the man is qualified. We may conclude that Zahra doesn’t like Mansuri anymore and voted against him out of malice; or maybe it was spite against Valencia for favoring his own castoff commissioner.
Mansuri was appointed 4-1 so there’s no effect on almost anything by Zahra’s petulant vote. Almost. Because this vote creates a recent precedent of sorts that means nobody gets an auto pass when it comes to future appointments. And that includes Zahra himself who will be shopping for a new Planning Commissioner one of these days.
We’ve seen his own flailing effort to create a controversy over Councilwoman Jamie Valencia’s campaign contributions, going so far as to basically accusing his own City Attorney of incompetence in the matter. And that’s not the only unforced error made by this little fellow.
Zahra says take a hike!
Back in January Zahra decided not to re-appoint his Planning Commissioner Arif Mansuri, a gentleman FFFF has noted as a diligent and intelligent representative with actual professional credentials. Zahra instead appointed a young guy named Adrian Meza.
Never heard of Meza? I didn’t either so I did some research. The guy is one of those identity politicking “progressive” types, without any discernable ability who hang around politics for critical self validation – just like his apparent mentor, Ahmad Zahra. Meza says he is a Digital Marketing Specialist, whatever that means, and works for a company that arranges egg collection and surrogacy for gay people. What this has to do with experience in land use and planning is beyond me.
More importantly, Meza is a member of the that preachy and self-righteous crowd that doesn’t do an awful lot of thinking for themselves. Naturally he has been a writer of some kind for the Fullerton Observer that touted his video about how bad Fullerton’s roads are. The video recommended new taxes, of course, and even spent time wedging in support for the Trail to Nowhere with a hat tip to the community disservice of FFFF.
His bio on linkedin suggests he is still a Parks Commissioner (his first listed title!) and and even lists his efforts for the Observer as some sort of real job. Other stuff is part-time work in municipal park departments. Of course, like Zahra, he describes himself as a “videographer” with one amateur attempt listed. Man, talk about fluffing. We do have another Zahra on our hands.
Nothing left but empty bloviation…
Anyway, this selection has come to grief, apparently because Mr. Meza doesn’t currently live in Fullerton. as required by law. WoW. That’s embarrassing. How is it that Zahra didn’t know his guy doesn’t live here? And an even better question would ask whether Meza has been on Fullerton’s Park and Rec Commission while not a citizen of Fullerton. That would look bad. The question deserves an answer from Zahra; if Meza was willing to be on our Planning Commission illegally there’s no reason to suppose he had no qualms about being a Parks Commissioner while living, say, in Anaheim.
Of course no one will get an answer from Zahra about this, because no one will ask. Hopefully one of the other Councilpersons who ratified the nomination will try to find out. But I doubt it, Fullerton being Fullerton.
FFFF received a fun email the other day, pecked out by Fullerton 5th District Councilman Ahmad Zahra. It is directed to Fullerton Assistant City Attorney Baron Bettenhausen, a fellow that the Friends met yesterday. Ahmad writes on January 27th, and is obviously still in a grand funk about losing his precious Walk on Wilshire the previous week.
We’re #1.08!
The tone of the letter is pretty unfriendly since Zahra seems to believe Bettenhausen has left out something real important in the discussion of Jamie Valencia returning campaign contributions. Of course, as we have seen, none of this would have been necessary if Bettenhausen knew the law and had known about the FPPC decision in Palo Alto before January 21st.
But let’s let Ahmad speak for himself:
From: Ahmad Zahra <ahmad.zahra@cityoffullerton.com> Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2025 9:55 PM To: Baron J. Bettenhausen <bjb@jones-mayer.com>; Richard D. Jones <rdj@jones-mayer.com>; Eric Levitt <Eric.Levitt@cityoffullerton.com> Subject: Conflict of interest question
Caution: This is an external email and may be malicious. Please take care when clicking links or opening attachments.
Baron, at the last council meeting, you had opined that CM Valencia could vote on the matter of Walk on Wilshire since she had returned the campaign contributions to Tony Bushala and Cigar Shop owner, both of whom have direct economic interests in the decision. Community members have shared with me some concerns regarding your rendered opinion and I’d like clarifications from you.
Was the FPPC consulted on this matter, as has been the practice in the past on complicated issues (example: CM Charles votes on CSUF)? If so, where is their opinion letter and why was it not presented at the time of the meeting?
There’s been a claim that the funds hadn’t been actually returned even if the return check was issued. This is a claim from a resident that raised concerns but no evidence was presented. But it does bring up the question, what evidence did CM Valencia present to you and why was that not made public? This is especially relevant because that reporting period for campaign committees isn’t until Jan 31st, occurring after the meeting itself with no chance for the public to verify any of this.
In your opinion that night, while you addressed the letter of the law, did you factor in the spirit of the law? It seems to easy for anyone to take contributions, use them, then conveniently return the funds before a vote. This is especially important to know as CM Valencia was fully aware of the WoW vote since apparently it was a question asked to her during the campaign.
I would appreciate a clarification on these questions and would request that an FPPC letter confirming your opinion on this matter be made available to the public to prevent any legal issues. Any correspondence to the FPPC should also include the concerns of the public for a comprehensive review.
I am also requesting that any action to execute the reopening of Wilshire be delayed until such legal questions are resolved to avoid any legal challenges to the city.
Note: I am writing this email in the interest of the public and thus deem it and any response to it in the public domain and not under any lawyer confidentiality privilege.
Oh dear me. Where to start. Naturally, Zahra wants to make up and nurture a scandal where there is none. He’s obviously been stirring up an element of outraged Fullerton Boohoo to keep the red herring going. He even uses the same language as the Kennedy Sisters: “there’s been a claim,” and “This is a claim from a resident that raised concerns but no evidence was presented.”
FFFF first addressed the non-applicability of the law in question way back on January 21st. We know Zahra reads FFFF, but maybe he didn’t catch that post.
Anyway, Zahra wants to know if the FPPC has been consulted about this horror of horrors. We now know that the FPPC previously ruled on the identical issue in a case in Palo Alto. FFFF relayed that information, here on February 10th. The answer is clear as a bell: the law doesn’t apply. Bettenhausen should have known this before January 21, and maybe even before Valencia gave back money she didn’t have to.
Ahmad made me wear this and took a picture.
Then Zahra’s deep sea fishing expedition turns to the completely baseless “actual claim” that although a check may have been written, it wasn’t cashed, challenging Valencia’s integrity and Bettenhausen’s lack of diligence.
Zahra’s final numbered point is really funny. He wonders why the “spirit” of the law is not being upheld. Poor Ahmad should be addressing his lament to the State Legislature instead of his own attorney, but, whatever.
Here goes…
Zahra wants the FPPC findings on the issue to be made public, and he requests that WoW remain open until such time as the FPPC responds. Zahra’s worried about legal challenges? From whom? The Kennedy Sisters and Diane Vena? Man, what a failed Hail Mary. WoW was unceremoniously removed a few days after Zahra’s demand letter. Thousands more laughed than did weep at it.
Poor Ahmad wraps up his missive by letting his own lawyer know that this email and any response are free from attorney-client confidentiality – in the public interest, of course. That’s good ’cause we got it, Ahmad, being members of the public, and all. Was there ever even a response by Bettenhausen in the end? Who cares