{"id":206398,"date":"2026-03-06T00:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T00:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/206398\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T00:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T00:16:08","slug":"sheng-thao-unlikely-to-be-granted-pre-trial-hearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/206398\/","title":{"rendered":"Sheng Thao ‘unlikely’ to be granted pre-trial hearing"},"content":{"rendered":"

OAKLAND \u2014 A federal\u00a0judge signaled Thursday she is unlikely to grant a key defense request from former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and her co-defendants to challenge the FBI search warrants that led agents to raid their homes<\/a> and businesses\u00a0in June 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would not stop preparing for trial if I were you,\u201d U.S. District Court of Northern California Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers told a defense attorney Thursday.<\/p>\n

The hearing marked an early legal skirmish in a sprawling corruption case that has spread<\/a> across the East Bay.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors have accused Thao and her romantic partner Andre Jones of accepting political bribes<\/a> from father-and-son businessmen David and Andy Duong, who hold Oakland\u2019s recycling contract and had sought to win taxpayer dollars for a local housing venture.<\/p>\n

Together, the four co-defendants have pushed for months to be granted<\/a> what is known as a Franks hearing, in which a judge determines whether FBI Special Agent Duncan Haunold made false statements or reckless omissions in the affidavit used to obtain the search warrants.<\/p>\n

Agents seized computers, cell phones and other documents during the raids, which preceded Thao\u2019s removal as Oakland\u2019s mayor in a recall election and led to her subsequent indictment.<\/p>\n

Much of the evidence taken will likely be fair game in the eventual trial, which is expected to take place sometime this fall. The defendants face 20 years in federal prison on the most serious individual counts of mail and wire fraud.<\/p>\n

\"CaliforniaCalifornia Waste Solutions co-owner Andy Duong exits the Federal Building after appearing at the Federal Courthouse in Oakland, Calif., for his indictment on bribery and conspiracy charges by federal prosecutors on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025. Also, his father, David Duong, former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, and her boyfriend, Andre Jones, were indicted. (Ray Chavez\/Bay Area News Group)\u00a0<\/p>\n

While prosecutors say they have gathered a wide range of documents exposing the alleged bribery plot, they also relied extensively on an affidavit given by a key FBI confidential informant, identified in case documents simply as Co-Conspirator 1.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the judge appeared ready to unseal redacted court filings associated with the case, including possibly the identity of the\u00a0alleged co-conspirator, who is widely believed to be Mario Juarez<\/a>, a local political operative and a former business partner of the Duongs.<\/p>\n

That co-conspirator\u2019s credibility \u2014 the prime target of the defense in its pursuit of a Franks hearing \u2014 may become a central theme of an eventual trial.<\/p>\n

Juarez, a longtime Oakland businessman, has faced repeated accusations over the years of fraud, blackmail and threats against former business partners.<\/p>\n

Days ahead of the June 2024 raids, the co-conspirator gave\u00a0inconsistent and partially inaccurate statements to law enforcement about a shooting at his home that he described as an assassination attempt<\/a> by the Duongs. There is no public evidence the Duongs were involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is relevant that the informant would lie about such a serious matter,\u201d said Shawn Halbert, an attorney for Jones, the ex-mayor\u2019s romantic partner who was affiliated with a short-lived housing company launched by Juarez and the Duongs.<\/p>\n

Abraham Fine, a prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney\u2019s office, said the conspirator\u2019s statements ultimately did not add up but noted that Haunold, the federal agent, could not be faulted for what was known at the time about the shooting.<\/p>\n

Plus, Fine said, \u201cthe vast majority of the affidavit is related to the public corruption scheme, so this whole discussion about the shooting, I think, is a red herring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MarioMario Juarez is pictured in a video produced by the Vietnamese American Business Association, which highlights the work of Evolutionary Homes. Juarez is identified as a founder of the homebuilding company. (YouTube)\u00a0(YouTube)<\/p>\n

Jones\u2019 attorney also noted that the June 2024 search warrant omitted an explicitly racist and vulgar comment that the co-conspirator allegedly made about Jones, who is Black, that had appeared in an earlier warrant targeting the informant himself.<\/p>\n

Thao\u2019s defense, meanwhile, contended that she should be treated as \u201csingularly\u201d different from the other defendants because the FBI did not appear to gather any recording, email or text message sent by her that ties her to the alleged bribery scheme.<\/p>\n

\u201cMs. Thao, by virtue of how the government connected her to this, has essentially been lost in the wash,\u201d the ex-mayor\u2019s attorney Jeffrey Tsai said at the hearing.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez Rogers did not budge, however, accusing Tsai of trying to deliver a \u201cclosing argument\u201d in the case, instead of meeting a separate legal standard by proving that the FBI agent had acted in a \u201cdishonest\u201d or \u201creckless\u201d manner.<\/p>\n

Overall, the judge showed little patience for the defense\u2019s arguments, at one point appearing to mock a claim by Andy Duong\u2019s attorney Winston Chan that federal agents did not reasonably justify seizing the defendants\u2019 electronic devices as evidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally, that\u2019s your argument? That your clients weren\u2019t using computers?\u201d Gonzalez Rogers said, musing later, \u201cIt strains credulity that people don\u2019t communicate with computers and cell phones\u2026 Perhaps Elon Musk. I\u2019ve read that he doesn\u2019t use a computer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at shomik@bayareanewsgroup.com.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OAKLAND \u2014 A federal\u00a0judge signaled Thursday she is unlikely to grant a key defense request from former Oakland…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,184,7,409,1312,138,332,1529,1055,181,23,100,143,7115,145,406,144,13,385],"class_list":{"0":"post-206398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-alameda-county","9":"tag-bay-area","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-city-politics","12":"tag-courts","13":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","14":"tag-east-bay","15":"tag-east-bay-crime","16":"tag-fbi","17":"tag-latest-headlines","18":"tag-local-news","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-oakland","21":"tag-oakland-fbi-raids","22":"tag-oakland-headlines","23":"tag-oakland-mayor","24":"tag-oakland-news","25":"tag-politics","26":"tag-regional"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}