Ok I asked a clarifying question about this but it was not answered, now I have done a little more research myself and I think the record needs to be corrected
1. Marva32 is correct if the crime unambiguously occurred in a district.
2. If the crime did not unambiguously occur in a given district there are a range of tests which are/can be applied none of which are unequivocal/decisive.
3. Hence it is not true to say that logistics and location of the prosecutor have no impact on the venue in all circumstances.
If it eventuates that the majority of conduct in question occurred in California, then we can conclude that the venue was chosen for that reason. If not - eg, if much of it was international, it was distributed across states/court districts, etc - it may be that the court was chosen from a range of possible locations to try the case in part for logistical reasons. Hence it is impossible to know at this point why Los Angeles was chosen. It is naive to think that if a substantial part of the conduct occurred in Texas and a similar amount in California, that the prosecutor would not rather try the case away from the home state of many of the accused. It is also incorrect to say, a priori, that the prosecutor does not under any circumstances have some discretion as to venue.
The following is from a congressional report summarizing federal law on jurisdiction in federal criminal cases:
(Summary and download at
http://opencrs.com/document/RL33223/)
"A crime is committed in any district in which any of its “conduct” elements are committed. Some offenses are committed entirely within a single district; there they must be tried. Others begin in one district and are completed in another. They may be tried where they occur unless Congress has limited the choice of venue for the particular offense. Conspiracy may be tried in any district in which an overt act in its furtherance is committed, at least when the commission of an overt act is an element of the conspiracy statute at issue. Crimes committed beyond the territorial confines of the United States are usually tried in the district into which the accused is first brought."
Edited, thought references would be helpful.