Last June it was big news when the FBI raided the home of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao. What followed was several days of complete silence from the mayor with no one able to say where she was. Then she held a press conference the following Monday during which she aggressively denied any wrongdoing and blamed the FBI raid on billionaires arrayed against her.
"I want to be crystal clear. I have done nothing wrong," said Thao. "I can tell you with confidence that this investigation is not about me."
Thao blasted the raid her home early Thursday morning which she said came without warning and said the effort to have her recalled from office is a waste of time and city resources.
"I want to know what probable cause the FBI has. What evidence have they collected that justifies raiding the home of a sitting mayor without notice and without the courtesy of a conversation," said Thao. "I want to know more about the handful of billionaires from San Francisco and Piedmont who are hell-bent on running me out of office. I want to know why the day following the qualification of a recall election, funded by some of the richest people in the Bay Area, seemed like the right day to execute a warrant."
Her spokesman quit and then her lawyer quit, apparently she hadn't discussed the press conference with him in advance. But at the time there was real confusion what the FBI investigation was about. Did it involve Thao or were they looking for information on her partner who also lived in the home. There was a simultaneous raid that morning at the home of a family who ran the city's recycling and some suggested the feds were looking for evidence in that case.
On the other hand, CBS News suggested the search probably had something to do with some attack mailers sent on Thao's behalf. The checks written to the post office for those ads bounced creating a bad situation.
Samari Johnson owns Butterfyl Direct Marketing, a direct mailing agency in Oakland. Johnson said his company printed the attack flyers and mailed them out in 2022.
Johnson said a couple of weeks before the November 2022 general election, a long-time customer, Mario Juarez, contracted him to print roughly 170,000 attack mailers targeting Oakland mayoral candidates Ignacio De La Fuente and Loren Taylor...
Johnson said the attack ads went out about one week before the election. He said Juarez paid him $31,200 for his service and gave him three checks to pay the U.S. Postal Service for the postage. After the mailers went out, he said all three checks bounced, totaling more than $53,000.
Thao's former chief of staff, Renia Webb, claimed that the money for those flyers ultimately came from Andy Duong of California Waste Solutions who was backing Thao. His business was raided by the FBI the same day as Thao's home.
As of today, the SF Chronicle is reporting that authorities will be announcing tomorrow that former Mayor Thao and others have been indicted.
Former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao was criminally indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury after an FBI corruption investigation, a source familiar with the matter told the Chronicle...
the source said officials will announce the indictment of Thao, who was recalled from office by voters in November. The person said others were indicted alongside Thao but did not identify them...
Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission has been investigating the Duong family for allegedly using straw donors to give money to politicians, including Thao.
We'll know for certain tomorrow but it sounds like CBS News was basically on track with that earlier story. Clearly voters made the right choice to recall Thao when they did.
