City scandal a witch hunt?

Criminal-defense attorney and former county prosecutor Steve Meister used to be an aide to L.A. City Controller Laura Chick, she who passed along audits and allegations to DA Steve Cooley and the feds that sparked grand jury probes into City Hall corruption. In today's L.A. Daily Journal, Meister characterizes the "pay for play" scandal as a witch hunt. His opinion piece is not free online, but here's a salient part:

With prosecutors poised to reap big political gains if they succeed, we should expect criminal cases against the high and mighty to result from all this, or at least expect prosecutors' desire to bring these cases to be tremendous. The story is getting steady coverage in many Los Angeles area newspapers, some of which appear to have made up their minds about what's happening, even though the investigations are far from over (commendably, the Daily Journal is not on this list)...

Modern legal witch hunts develop in three stages: First, prosecutors publicly state that an institution or the people who are part of it may be very rotten; second, politicians and opinion makers champion this view in the media; and third, public opinion that "where there's smoke, there's fire" crystallizes, all before the facts are in and the truth is known. In the present case, we're through Stage 2. We need to stop ourselves from reaching Stage 3...

So what's next? Probably more resignations from Hahn's administration, more firms like Fleishman-Hillard walking away from existing contracts, more clouds of suspicion gathering around whoever is next, more opportunistic maneuvers from the politically ambitious - and all the while, no evidence or proof of anything wrong.

Are these the first steps on the road to civic reform, or is this turning into a witch hunt? Ask anyone whose name or business has been linked, correctly or not, to the scandal. They'll have a definite opinion.