Ex-Mayor Sheng Thao betrayed Oakland by making herself \u201copen for business\u201d to illegal bribes before stepping foot into the mayor\u2019s office, federal prosecutors declared Wednesday at the start of a federal corruption trial detailing the East Bay\u2019s largest political scandal in decades.<\/p>\n
Yet that narrative came under immediate attack from the recalled mayor\u2019s attorneys, who immediately framed the allegations as the imagined creation of the government\u2019s star witness.<\/p>\n
The dueling narratives dominated the opening statements of a corruption trial that threatens to further rock the East Bay\u2019s political scene, more than two years after federal agents first raided the homes of Thao, her romantic partner Andre Jones and the father-son business duo of David and Andy Duong. Together, the quartet has pleaded not guilty to numerous charges, including conspiracy to commit bribery and wire and mail fraud. The most serious charges carry potential prison sentences of up to 20 years.<\/p>\n
For the first time Wednesday, federal prosecutors revealed the existence of an Apple note on Andy Duong\u2019s cell phone that allegedly outlined the supposed scheme in fall 2022, months earlier than any other known written account for the plan. It suggested Thao committed to buying 300 housing units from a fledgling company co-founded by the Duongs and ensuring Oakland would enter a 10-year contract extension for their recycling company, California Waste Solutions. In return, Jones would become a \u201cconsultant\u201d for the housing business.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors had previously detailed another outline for the scheme \u2014 captured in a text message by a fifth participant, Mario Juarez \u2014 in March 2023, which called for the Duongs to bankroll $75,000 in campaign mailers to help Thao win the November 2022 mayoral election. Prosecutors additionally said Jones was due a $300,000 \u201cno show\u201d job with the Duongs\u2019 new housing company, Evolutionary Homes, while the alleged agreement also called for the Duongs to hand pick numerous political hires and appointments in Thao\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, prosecutors also unveiled a never-before-seen trove of clandestine pictures taken by Andy Duong of the quartet meeting numerous times during the alleged scheme, while confirming for the first time that their investigation into Thao began a year before her alleged scheme collapsed in spring 2024.<\/p>\n
Standing before the jury, Assistant U.S. Attorney Abraham Fine made clear that the scheme \u201cwas not politics as usual \u2014 this was politics for profit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a case about a public official who put her power up for sale,\u201d said Assistant U.S. Attorney Abraham Fine. \u201cA public official who put greed first, who put her own monetary interest above the people she was supposed to serve.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was powerful, but was also corrupt and she betrayed her oath of office,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The only problem with that story, countered Thao\u2019s attorney, is that it was all \u201cpure fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Motioning to Thao \u2014 who stood in a purple dress and dark blue suit jacket on the other end of the courtroom \u2014 the attorney suggested prosecutors portrayed her all wrong. The real Sheng Thao, he said, is a \u201cyoung mayor full of ideas, visions and energy to shake up the political system\u201d who \u201cstill carries credit card balances and pays her bills, just like anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe wasn\u2019t running a bribery scheme for any kind of money \u2014 money she never asked for, and money she never received,\u201d said the attorney, Jeff Tsai, who stressed that prosecutors found no evidence Thao even had any knowledge of the alleged plot.<\/p>\n
He spoke before an overflow crowd that spilled into two courtrooms, while dozens of people rallied outside the federal courthouse in downtown Oakland in support of the Duong family and, in particular, its patriarch. Hailing as far away as San Jose, the roughly two-dozen demonstrators held signs declaring \u201cNo political bias,\u201d and \u201cstand with David Duong,\u201d along with calls for \u201cThe whole truth \u2014 not half the story.\u201d<\/p>\n
As with every other attorney for the four defendants, Tsai made clear that the foundation of his defense laid in the credibility \u2014 or lack thereof \u2014 of the government\u2019s star witness, Juarez. A failed two-time Oakland City Council candidate, Juarez co-founded the Duong\u2019s housing company Evolutionary Homes and exchanged numerous texts with Andy Duong about the alleged scheme.<\/p>\n
Staring straight at the jury, Tsai stressed that his client repeatedly tried keeping Juarez at a distance as the alleged scheme purportedly took root in October 2022. She later acted against Juarez\u2019s explicit wishes by hiring someone as interim city administrator early in her term that Juarez wanted fired \u2014 a risk, Tsai said, given that Juarez \u201cdidn\u2019t take no for an answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSheng Thao was one of those few people who Mario Juarez could not control,\u201d said Tsai. \u201cAnd because of that, she was not a useful tool for him. And as we expect you\u2019ll learn in this case, that is why we are here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was managing a volatile political figure,\u201d Tsai added. \u201cNot entering into a criminal conspiracy with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throughout opening statements Wednesday, the other defendants\u2019 attorneys unleashed a thesaurus worth of barbs and disparaging adjectives to describe Juarez, calling him by turns \u201cthe master of half-truths\u201d and \u201ca sophisticated political operator.\u201d Fine, the prosecutor, even acknowledged to the jury that Juarez was \u201cno angel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was and is a consummate hustler,\u201d said Andy Duong\u2019s attorney, Winston Chan. \u201cHis face should be in the dictionary under \u2018Hustler.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
For hours, attorneys for Jones and the Duongs picked apart the prosecution\u2019s case, suggesting prosecutors cherry-picked evidence to paint their clients in a poor light.<\/p>\n
Andre Jones\u2019 attorney portrayed the $95,000 that Jones received from the Duongs as merely advance payments on commission sales that Jones was expected to make for the company, once its housing units were manufactured in Mexico. Not a dime of that money ever made its way into Thao\u2019s bank accounts, which were kept separate during her relationship with Jones, added the attorney, Mark Goldrosen.<\/p>\n
In fact, Thao\u2019s relationship with Jones had grown increasingly rocky in 2023, so much so that she considered leaving him in the middle of the alleged bribery scheme, Goldrosen said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe same time the government is claiming there was a bribery scheme in place \u2014 with lots and lots of money coming to Sheng Thao \u2014 she was saying she was going to walk away from the person who was her link to all this hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars she was going to get?\u201d he asked the jury.<\/p>\n
David Duong\u2019s attorney also pleaded ignorance.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot agree to a deal that no one told you about,\u201d said the longtime businessman\u2019s attorney, Jeffrey Schenk. \u201cDavid Duong did not know about an illegal bribe, illegal payments, illegal deals. That is the heart of this case.\u201d<\/p>\n
Schenk instead suggested that David Duong acted like a careful businessman throughout the alleged scheme, including by bringing on Jones \u2013 who had a lengthy background in government relations posts \u2013 as a \u201cgovernment relations\u201d consultant with the housing company, and even memorializing the arrangement with a written contract in spring 2023. Jones sat in on multiple meetings for the company in 2023, including at least one with then-Santa Clara County commissioner, Cindy Chavez, as well as another with San Jose city officials, his attorney said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have this relationship, and you\u2019re ashamed of it, you\u2019re not documenting it,\u201d Schenk said. \u201cWhat David does here is what a businessman would do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Testimony in the case is expected to begin Thursday, with prosecutors calling Thao\u2019s former chief of staff, Leigh Hanson, to the stand to describe the inner workings of the former mayor\u2019s administration and the role that Jones played in it.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Andy Duong\u2019s attorney chided prosecutors for leaving out key texts and details in their opening statements, imploring jurors to \u201cask yourself: why are they trying to whitewash you?\u201d The attorney said his client largely viewed Juarez\u2019s plans as merely pie-in-the-sky ambitions \u2013 the musings of a man who craved political power in Oakland and would stop at nothing to get it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was never any deal amongst the defendants to begin with,\u201d said the attorney, Winston Chan. \u201cAnd the only deal was in Mario\u2019s own imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ex-Mayor Sheng Thao betrayed Oakland by making herself \u201copen for business\u201d to illegal bribes before stepping foot into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[17802,21214,21980,192873,1011,4415,143,145,144,1667,1428],"class_list":["post-496403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bribery","tag-conspiracy","tag-corruption","tag-duong","tag-housing","tag-mayor","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-recycling","tag-trial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496403","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=496403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}