Rep. Kevin Kiley Calls on FBI to Investigate California’s High Speed Rail: No Power, No Money, No ‘High Speed’

California Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) is making the most of his congressional office, just as he did when he was in the State Assembly.

Kiley has formally put in a request to FBI Director Kash Patel to open an investigation into California’s High-Speed Rail project, which is now 17 years old, with no track, no trains and $13 Billion gone. Where?

As Rep. Kiley says in his letter to Director Patel:

“Originally projected to cost $33 billion and scheduled to be completed by 2020, that dream has become a nightmare. According to the California High Speed Rail Authority’s (HSRA) own estimates, the total project cost has now ballooned by over $100 billion above that original estimate. Moreover, California’s Auditor reports the HSRA will miss its latest 2033 deadline (one of many) without having completed a single segment of the track. Indeed, the New York Times reported that according to, “projections widely used by engineers and project managers, the train could not be completed in this century.” [emphasis added]

“This malfeasance leads to questions that transcend mere incompetence. How is it possible to have spent over $13 billion without a single station opening? Where have these funds gone? Who benefited?” Kiley wrote Tuesday in a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel.

In 2022, the Globe reported:

By 2011, it was apparent that the High Speed Rail Authority was violating important mandates in the 2008 initiative, passed by voters. Proposition 1A, $9 billion in bonds for high-speed rail, included numerous mandates, none of which can be legally bypassed on the way to building the massive train system.

I reported in 2011, “Complicating matters, the first segment of the rail system won’t even run high-speed trains until the entire system is built. The initiative required the train to be only high-speed.”

The Globe reported in 2023:

“If it is built, California’s High-Speed Rail would be the largest public works project in state history. That fact alone appears to be intoxicating to state officials, in a perpetual quest to have California be the first state to do anything,” I reported in 2011. That’s how long California’s High Speed Rail has served only as a jobs program and a really bad joke on California voters and taxpayers.

“Even though high-speed rail has become nothing more than a pipeline project for grabbing big money and a big lie, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the rail bill Wednesday, sealing California’s economic fate. Because of the illegitimacy of the project’s intent, California taxpayers will be left holding the bill.”

I wrote that in 2012. Since then, the only thing that has changed is California Governor Gavin Newsom is now responsible for this High Speed Swindle.

As I explained in 2012, the governor, legislators and the High Speed Rail Authority were (and still are) violating the law:

Prop. 1A states, “The high-speed train system shall be planned and constructed in a manner that minimizes urban sprawl and impacts on the natural environment.”  But the impact of the rail system may actually create suburban communities around train stations within reasonable distances from urban areas and higher employment areas.

The train system will dissect both urban and rural communities which will be problematic, as well as a serious violation of the “natural environment.” The trains will travel through densely populated cities, but also through sensitive agricultural and natural areas in the state.

In February 2019, President Trump called for California to return all federal rail funding, following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first state of the state address where the Governor vowed to kill High Speed Rail saying, “there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to LA.”  However, Newsom flipped on his promise within the week, announcing he was allowing one odd segment of the rail project to be built in the Central Valley, nicknamed “the conjugal express,” going from prison to prison, Madera to Bakersfield.  The goal for the strange and unnecessary rail line was so California would not have to return $3.5 billion to the federal government.

During the Biden administration, and just ahead of Trump’s January 2025 inauguration, “A group of Californian’s congressional Democrats comprising of Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), Senator-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Congressional Members Jim Costa (D-CA), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Pete Aguilar (D-CA) continued to make a major push this week for the U.S.  Department of Transportation (DOT) to approve $536 million in grants to help complete construction of the California High-Speed rail project before the inauguration of Donald Trump,” the Globe reported.

Upon taking office, President Trump announced in February that he would be launching an investigation into CAHSR, fulfilling a promise his administration made to look into the system. Specifically, he noted that the high cost of the program was mind-boggling, echoing decades of criticisms within California that the project has been nothing more than a boondoggle.

“The train that’s being built between Los Angeles and San Francisco is the worst managed project I think I’ve ever seen,” said Trump on Tuesday. “We’re going to start an investigation of that because it’s not possible. I built for a living and I built on time, on budget. It’s impossible that something could cost that much. They made it much shorter. So now it’s at little places way away from San Francisco and way away from Los Angeles. We’re going to start a big investigation on that because I’ve never seen anything like it. Nobody has ever seen anything like it.

“It’s the worst managed project I think I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some of the worst. I read that every person who would ride the train could instead take a limousine back and forth, and you’d have hundreds of billions of dollars left over. It is the worst overrun that there has ever been in the history of our country.”

This is a long-winded way of explaining why Rep. Kevin Kiley is calling on the FBI to investigate California’s High Speed Rail program:

“Because the project has consumed billions in federal funding, the FBI has both the authority, and I would argue the responsibility, to pursue these questions and deliver answers to the American people. The Public Integrity Division is uniquely qualified to root out any corruption, recover stolen funds, and restore confidence that our tax dollars are being stewarded
carefully.”

Do it. Now. And please hurry.

What Voters Approved in 2008

California voters approved Proposition 1A in 2008, the “Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act for the 21st Century.” Here are some details:

* $33.5 billion cost. They approved a total cost of $33.5 billion for a high-speed rail system. The $33.5 billion was to be made up of a combination of 1/3 federal funds, 1/3 state funds and 1/3 private funds. Importantly, the investment from California taxpayers was limited to a $9.95 billion bond.

* S.F. to L.A. Voters approved a system connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles, with a trip time of two hours and 40 minutes, at a cost of $55 per ticket. But the plan has veered sharply inland from San Francisco to Los Angeles, over to the Central Valley, with a leg from Fresno to Bakersfield. And the cost of the trip jumped to $105.

* Ridership: 95 million. Even ridership numbers have been toyed with. Voters were told that there would be a ridership of 95 million passengers by 2030. Ridership estimates have decreased nearly three times since 2008, and they are still absurdly inflated. In the new report, they’re estimated to be as high as 36 million passengers by 2060 (page 5-17). That’s about a third of the Prop. 1A promise.

* Bond repayment. Repaying high-speed rail bonds will cost the state’s General Fund $647 million per year for 30 years, or approximately $20 billion for the $9.95 billion bond.