Ex-Secret Service chief seeks exit from Girardi bribery suit

The former head of the Secret Service’s Los Angeles division is urging a federal judge to remove him from an $18.2 million lawsuit that also names Erika Girardi — estranged wife of disbarred attorney Tom Girardi — and others over claims he was bribed to wrongfully prosecute a fashion designer for credit card fraud.

Anand Law Group PC partner Harvinder S. Anand, on behalf of Lorenzo Robert Savage III, wrote in a motion to dismiss his client from the federal case last Friday. The plaintiff, designer Christopher Psaila, failed to state a valid Bivens claim against Savage in the complaint and the bribery allegations had no factual support, Anand stated. Christopher Psaila v. Erika Girardi et al., 2:23-CV-07120 (C.D. Cal., filed Aug. 29, 2023).

A Bivens claim is a civil rights claim against federal officials who are alleged to have violated the U.S. Constitution.

An attorney for Psaila, McLane Bednarski & Litt LLP partner David S. McLane, said in an email Monday: “The conduct we allege in our complaint goes to the heart of the integrity of the criminal justice system. We believe that if the truth of the relationship between Tom Girardi and Savage had been known to the prosecutors and been disclosed to the defense, combined with the many other wrongs we have alleged, the criminal case against Christopher Psaila would have never been brought, and Mr. Psaila would have never been subjected to arrest, indictment and prosecution.

McLane added, “Mr. Psaila suffered tremendous economic and emotional hardship as a result of the ill-conceived prosecution. We are confident that we will prevail on Mr. Savage’s motion to dismiss … and look forward to proceeding on the merits of the case.”

Anand declined to comment on his motion.

Oral arguments on the motion are to be heard before U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald in Los Angeles on April 8.

“Savage played no role in plaintiff’s criminal matter, except to ask other agents to investigate Erika Girardi’s report of credit card fraud,” Anand wrote in the motion. “And that irrefutable truism is why plaintiff is unable to plead any facts against Mr. Savage – there is simply nothing to allege against him. Plaintiff’s Bivens claim against Mr. Savage is as devoid of factual merit as it is legally untenable.”

According to the complaint, Savage was “actively and instrumentally involved in instigating and causing a baseless criminal arrest” against Psaila when he “caused fabricated statements to be in the search warrant application and the indictment.”

However, Anand, in his court filing, argued these were “ad nauseam accusations” full of “hyperbole and conclusory labels” against Savage.

Last August, Psaila sued Erika Girardi, known by her stage name as Erika Jayne, her assistants, several U.S. Secret Service agents in addition to Savage, and American Express on claims they collectively sought to “maliciously prosecute” Psaila on wire fraud and identity theft charges in 2017.

The lawsuit stated the charges against Psaila were dismissed in September 2021 without “any fair or reasonable investigation” and American Express refunded the Girardis’ $787,117.88 for 132 transactions.

Psaila’s indictment claimed he defrauded Jayne by charging her American Express card with false charges of $800,000 to $900,000 for custom goods and services from his company Marco Marco LLC, now known as Marcosquared LLC.

According to Psaila’s lawsuit, Jayne gave him full permission to charge her card for costumes he made for her performances from 2014 to 2016

Psaila alleged that because Jayne, Girardi, and his firm were going through financial woes toward the end of 2016, they schemed with the government and American Express to go after the designer in order to avoid recouping the costume payments.

“Tom Girardi was going bankrupt, and used client settlement funds from his law firm, Girardi Keese, to pay for his and Erika Girardi’s extravagant lifestyle and personal bills. Thus, both Erika Girardi and Tom Girardi had a compelling reason to illegally claim that Chris Psaila and Marco Marco had defrauded them,” the lawsuit stated.

Last December, Fitzgerald heard arguments for Jayne’s motion to strike the complaint pursuant to the state’s anti-SLAPP statute. The matter is still under submission.

In his motion, Anand noted that the plaintiff’s complaint detailed a $7,500 payment Girardi had made to Savage in 2015 in a case the then Secret Service agent had filed against Volkswagen. Psaila’s suit suggested this was a bribe.

Anand quoted the plaintiff’s lawsuit as saying the court was unhappy that Girardi had entered Savage’s suit against Volkswagen at the eleventh hour, when an offer was already on the table to settle for $7,500. Girardi then paid Savage the $7,500 and announced it to the judge, Anand said, quoting the plaintiff.

“The court can determine based on its ‘judicial experience and common sense,’ that no person would announce to a court and the world that he would pay another person money if it actually was a bribe,” Anand wrote.

“Because those facts themselves prove that Mr. Girardi paid Mr. Savage for a valid legal reason, it was not a bribe and plaintiff’s allegation is a legal label the court should ignore,” Anand wrote.

Separately, Girardi awaits a Los Angeles trial in May on charges he misappropriated $15 million from client settlement funds and a second trial in Chicago on charges he took $3 million from clients related to a 2018 Indonesian air crash.