3 Bat Friday: Bonta ‘too compromised’ to prosecute Duong/Juarez cases; former SFPUC boss Harlan Kelly will serve only two years in prison while petitioning to reinstate city pension
Plus, former mayor London Breed negotiates extension for security detail through NBA All Star game
The day a new mayor is sworn in, the previous mayor loses security detail — except for former Mayor Breed. She managed to negotiate an extension of hers until the beginning of February, stating that she needed the protection for the busy NBA All Star Weekend. Breed looked refreshed at the All Star game snapping photos with Steph Curry. She recently returned from a respite in Rome, Italy, which means her security guards were on vacation with her or sitting home twiddling their thumbs. Either way is bad because, of course, taxpayers are picking up the tab. …
The biggest bombshell from last month’s Alameda County prosecutors’ filing came from Senior Assistant District Attorney Kwixuan Maloof, who wrote that California Attorney General Rob Bonta is “too compromised” to take over the Duong and Juarez cases “without violating a state law intended to prevent conflicts of interests in prosecutions.” The filing accuses the Duong family (owners of California Waste Solutions and subjects of a massive FBI corruption investigation) of trying to benefit from the election of Sheng Thao, the disgraced, recalled Oakland mayor, and states that prosecution of longtime political operative Mario Juarez should go on as planned, minus Bonta.
As I wrote last July, Bonta had a very cozy financial and political relationship with the Duongs and with Juarez, including in 2017, when Bonta helped secure a $3.4 million grant from the California Energy Commission for Viridis Fuels, a company co-owned by Juarez. In 2021 and 2022, Juarez was even Bonta’s alternate on the Alameda Democratic Central Committee where he made calls on behalf of Bonta to get people to vote their way on certain issues. When the news broke about the FBI raids, Bonta said he would donate the more than $155,000 given by the Duong family, their businesses, and associates.
This isn’t the first time Bonta has been caught with his donations down — just days before he announced he wouldn’t pursue criminal chargesagainst Southern California Edison over its role in starting the 2018 Woolsey Fire in Los Angeles County, Bonta got a $72,000 bonanza in campaign funding from attorneys employed by the law firm Hueston Hennigan LLP, including partners who directly represented SoCal Edison on the case. Then there was Bonta’s battle over California’s “gig worker law” where he received nearly $100,000 from lawyers at firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters, which has long worked with Lyft (and Bonta himself worked at the firm as a litigation associate from 1999 to 2003). Bonta also accepted nearly $40,000 from attorneys employed by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, which represented Uber in similar litigation. Should Bonta run for governor in 2026, he could move that cash to his campaign.
Bonta seems to have a thing with energy companies. Earlier this month ExxonMobil sued him, alleging that California’s top cop has been motivated by “foreign influence, personal ambition, and a murky source of financing rife with conflicting business interests.” The ExxonMobil lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleges Bonta and a collection of environmental groups engaged in business disparagement, defamation, interference with prospective business relationships and contracts, and civil conspiracy. “This suit is about a state office holder’s abuse of the public trust,” the complaint begins. “It is also case about the corrupting influence of foreign money in the American legal system and about the sordid for-profit incentives and outright greed that tries to hide behind so-called public impact litigation.” …
Instead of proposing fees on cars and drivers to close their budget deficit, perhaps SFMTA should think about why people don’t want to ride their coaches and why it’s so easy for people to escape paying fares.
Even with the exit of its controversial leader Jeffrey Tumlin, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency — which will have a deficit of $322 million next year — wants drivers, Waymo, and ride-share companies to close the gap, proposing a visitor fee for drivers entering the city, pay-to-go express lanes and congestion pricing, and “curb fees” for Uber, Waymo, and Amazon trucks. With over 70 percent of San Franciscans owning at least one car, they would bear the brunt of the costs, but so would anyone receiving deliveries or taking Uber, Waymo, or Lyft, because the companies will simply pass on those extra costs. A few nights ago, a friend and I took the 6 Haight/Parnassus and had the bus almost to ourselves the entire trip. The two or three riders who did come onboard didn’t pay. Perhaps SFMTA should look in the mirror and think about why people don’t want to ride their coaches and why it’s so easy for people to escape paying fares. First: stop closing streets and gutting businesses with construction projects. Second: lay off managers who aren’t doing their jobs and should be the ones paying for the agency’s innumerable failures. …
Meanwhile over on “Slow Lake Street,” a recent sunny Sunday revealed a long and empty road with nary a bicyclist nor a pedestrian to enjoy it. Neighbors I spoke with say there have been two accidents in the past month — one bike hitting a car and two bikes crashing into each other. Both incidents were the fault of a bicyclist who tried to blame a vehicle. In one case, the rider blew through a stop sign and crashed into a car (it was caught on security camera video, so his claims of the car being at fault were easily dismissed). In the other incident, one bicyclist sped around a construction truck and slammed into another bicyclist coming into the lane. Cyclist one told police the truck was at fault. Police disagreed, stating that the truck was parked, and workers were loading it, making it the cyclist’s responsibility to slow down and check surroundings. …
On Jan. 22, Local 261 (LiUNA!) held its 17th annual holiday open house at its 18th Street headquarters, this year honoring San Francisco Police Officer’s Association President Tracy McCray, San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission President Kat Anderson, and Mary Jung, one of the most powerful Democrats in the city who chaired the local San Francisco party for four years. The reason for Local 261 honoring this strong group of women came as a surprise — they fought to get women’s uniforms for union workers versus women having to wear ill-fitting uniforms tailored for men. Nearly every major politico was at the event. Conspicuously absent? Mayor Daniel Lurie, who is said to still be angry at labor organizations that didn’t support his candidacy in November. Police sources tell me that Lurie’s bitterness has also been directed at them during several precinct meetings, where the new mayor mentioned their lack of support as they explained what they needed to make their jobs easier. …
After the LiUNA! event, my friend and I headed for a veggie burrito at Pancho Villa (pro tip: order a side of flame-grilled cebollitas [green onions]), and walked through a carnival of crazy at the 16th Street Mission BART station. The corner has always felt unsafe, but I’ve never seen it quite this bad — a huge crowd of people selling drugs, using drugs, vending stolen goods, and coming close to fisticuffs — with just one young SFPD officer trying to control it all. At one point he had two young men at arm’s length with two groups of other young men screaming at each other behind them.
Why this is allowed to continue is beyond comprehension. New District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder brings nothing to the table, believing, as her predecessors David Campos and Hillary Ronen did, that drug dealers and gang members should be protected from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of the “immigrant community.” I disagree. When my friend and I arrived at Pancho Villa, every person behind the counter was Latino or Latina, all capable, friendly, and patient (even with the drunk girl who kept changing her order). These are members of the community who deserve our utmost respect, support, and yes, protection. It is an insult for city officials to lump sex offenders, drug dealers, killers, and gang members in with these hardworking, productive members of society. ICE is welcome to the criminals, and Earth to Jackie Fielder, most law-abiding members of the immigrant community — who are most impacted by the criminal element — feel the same. …
When I broke the City Hall corruption scandals that helped send former Department of Public Works boss Mohammed Nuru and former San Francisco Public Utilities Commission head Harlan Kelly to prison, I thought they would at least serve more time than it took me to research and write those investigative reports. Nuru, who pleaded guilty to fraud charges, was sentenced to seven years in prison at Lompoc (also known as “Club Fed”) on Jan. 6, 2023, and is scheduled for release Jan. 27, 2028 (a few months shy of his full sentence). Kelly chose a jury trial where he was found guilty on six of eight fraud charges. Prosecutors asked for 6½ years, but despite saying Kelly “betrayed the public trust and made a mockery of his oath to serve the community in his high public office,” U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg sentenced him to a paltry four years. Kelly started serving his sentence on June 19, 2024, which would indicate a release date of June 18, 2028. After granting Kelly’s request to stay with Nuru at Club Fed, Judge Seeborg for some reason sent him to serve his time in Minnesota, and eventually moved him to the medium security federal correctional institution at Leavenworth, Kan. While Kelly may not be close to home, his release date is listed as Sept. 9, 2026, meaning he will serve just two years of his four-year sentence. All I can say is he better be singing like a bird. The real kicker? Kelly is petitioning the City of San Francisco to reinstate his pension. …
My X of the Week comes from Michael Falcone, who posted, “The difference between London Breed’s and Daniel Lurie’s video updates from the Tenderloin is that Breed smiled, wore a hard & safety vest and did nothing, whereas Lurie does not smile, has his sleeves rolled up and does nothing.”