The San Francisco Ethics Commission will take up the question of whether Mayor Daniel Lurie violated city and state law by refusing to disclose records associated with his October 2025 call with President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
At issue is Lurie\u2019s Oct. 22 conversation<\/a> with the president, in which Trump rescinded his planned deployment<\/a> of federal agents to the Bay Area.<\/p>\n Lurie\u2019s office has said some of the records related to the call are privileged. The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force disagreed.<\/p>\n The task force, the body that investigates violations of public-records law and urged<\/a> Lurie to release more records in January, voted 8-1 Wednesday that Lurie violated the law<\/a>, and sent the matter to the city\u2019s Ethics Commission.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lurie\u2019s office says the entire matter is a misunderstanding; there are no more records, like transcripts or notes,\u00a0having to do with the call. The only related records have to do with legal \u2014 and confidential \u2014\u00a0 advice given to the mayor\u2019s office related to an executive order<\/a> that Lurie signed to deal with the expected Trump deployment.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re at the point now where it\u2019s simply, \u2018Documents are believed to exist, so they must exist,\u2019 but that is not the case,\u201d said Dexter Darmali, the mayor\u2019s legislative and ethics secretary. \u201cThe Sunshine Ordinance does not require the city to produce documents if they do not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n The consequences of the Ethics Commission referral are unclear. The commission has little punitive power for these kinds of violations, and can only issue cease-and-desist letters, publicize the violation and issue warning letters, according to a 2014 city memo<\/a>.<\/p>\n Some in San Francisco worry Lurie made a deal to ward off federal agents, promising cooperation with the White House, for example. <\/p>\n In November, the San Francisco Standard reported<\/a> that a police official said late-night drug busts in the city were a \u201cshow of force\u201d that was \u201ckeeping President Trump from deploying the National Guard and ICE,\u201d citing minutes from a police union meeting.<\/p>\n Fears became more acute when former Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem said in March, minutes after she was sacked, that Lurie speaks \u201cquite often\u201d<\/a> with her and has been \u201ccooperative.\u201d<\/p>\n The mayor\u2019s office declined to comment on Noem\u2019s remarks. A City Hall source said they were baseless<\/a>, and that Lurie hadn\u2019t spoken with Noem since October.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Lurie-Trump call ethics case started when Hazel Williams, an organizer and frequent filer of public records requests, in October asked for any phone logs, transcripts, texts, or other records related to the call.\u00a0<\/p>\n The mayor\u2019s office first said it could disclose none, citing attorney-client privilege. It then released a calendar event for the call, and some text messages staff sent to supervisors, inviting them to a press conference during which Lurie announced he had spoken to Trump and won a reprieve.<\/p>\n But the Sunshine Task Force<\/a> members, for their part, said on Wednesday they believe there are still records being inappropriately withheld.<\/p>\n One said, for example, that \u201cunless the mayor has a special phone, there is a call log in the phone\u201d that has not been turned over. <\/p>\n Others speculated Lurie may have deleted any call logs, bringing up former mayor London Breed\u2019s<\/a> practice of deleting<\/a> official text messages. At one point, commissioners suggested they could send the matter to the California attorney general\u2019s office.<\/p>\n Williams said there is one easy way to dispel worries about Lurie making a deal with Trump: Release the records.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe it\u2019s true, maybe it\u2019s not. There\u2019s only one way to know, and we\u2019re being blocked from knowing,\u201d Williams said at Wednesday\u2019s hearing. \u201cThe public should have access to that information. It doesn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n The ethics commission will now take up the matter, though it is unclear when.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Francisco Ethics Commission will take up the question of whether Mayor Daniel Lurie violated city and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-250163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-san-francisco","9":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","10":"tag-san-francisco-news","11":"tag-sf","12":"tag-sf-headlines","13":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250163","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=250163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}