By Frank Parlato
OAKLAND, Calif. — On January 17, federal prosecutors unsealed an eight-count indictment charging former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, her partner Andre Jones, and recycling executives David Duong and Andy Duong with conspiracy, bribery, and wire fraud.
All four defendants pleaded not guilty.
Voters in Oakland had already removed Mayor Thao from office in a special recall election two months earlier.
Billionaire Rob Conway, a prominent Democratic donor and investor in Bay Area ventures, funded the petition to recall the mayor.
By June 2024, Conway’s teams gathered enough signatures to trigger the recall election. Within days, as if they had been poised and ready, and waiting for Conway to his part, the Department of Justice authorized an FBI raid on Thao’s home and the residences of David and Andy Duong—the two men alleged to have bribed her.
It was timed, as if to assure the recall of Thao.
The FBI raid made front-page news, as expected. The documents sought in the raid – bank records, mobile phone bills, corporate papers – could have been obtained through subpoenas. Nobody would have destroyed them or hidden them. They couldn’t. They all could be separately obtained – from banks, from carriers, from landlords, from the Department of State.
Raids as Theater: Manufactured Peril for Maximum Publicity
The raid’s purpose was publicity. You raid a person’s home at the crack of dawn, with 20 jackbooted agents in military gear to take the fight out of people who believe in due process and good manners.
You’re scared awake with a pound on the door and the command to open or we’ll break in – with helicopters above and the media tipped off to come for the fun of filming the second round of special agents going in and coming out again with boxes and boxes and more boxes.
You will never live quite the same in your house after such a raid – not only because the agents will leave the house in disheveled madness and take things you use and live with that they do not need and wil have nothing to do with the investigation because it is fun to be destructive, but because a the sanctity and the feeling of security of your home and hearth is obliterated.
The raids were unnecessary, as I hope to demonstrate in a future post by examining the evidence collected and its potential use.
This was a stunt raid. It cost taxpayers a lot of money, and it was done in the spirit of bullies, not so much from the jackbooted men on the ground, but the ones who authorized the raid, sitting in DC in the so-called Public Integrity section. A name plucked right out of Orwell.
Mayor Thao and those who had supported her were ready to fight the recall. They knew from the day she first won election in November 2022, it was coming. Conway is not a man for hiding. He declared war on the mayor and planned to overturn the 2022 election from the start. It was legal. It was business. He had businesses, too.
Conway simply did not want Mayor Thao in office. He chose to try to short circuit her term and undo the election. Oakland voters had elected her.
A billionaire decided to give those who were against her a second shot. You can do that with money and willpower. Conway had both.
He could afford to try to overturn an election with a recall and get a new mayor, one more suitable to his business interests. But he could not afford to lose the recall and have a mayor surviving his recall attempt and now stronger than ever. To do a recall and fail, is worse than doing no recall at all.
And so, luck or influence shone down upon Conway. He is a man. who creates his own good luck. The FBI helped out.
The headline-producing, supposedly law enforcement effort of the FBI raiding a mayor and one of the prominent businessmen of the city – raided for a bribe – raided for show – raided to make it seem that the alleged crimes were 1000 times greater than what it turned out to be – an alleged bribe – a fictitious bribe – but even in fiction, a pusillanimous bribe – an alleged quid without a quo – and a dubious quid – but gargantuan in impact.
It was like spreading manure – just a small clod of it – but it was made to look like a mountain and it stunk up fast. The mayor was stymied in her tracks. City Hall was paralyzed.
When the Show Replaces the Facts
Was Thao a crook? That is what they all asked. How could they not? They raided her house.
Thao supporters grew tepid. They chose to sit out of the special election. They were civic-minded people. Some of them union, some of them advocacy groups. They had no billionaire paying the way. They could not afford to get mixed up in headlines, supporting a corrupt mayor, a woman bribed by wealthy businessmen. A woman whose home was raided.
It’s how the media works – no skepticism, no proof, no understanding of how the Department of Justice purveys its namesake justice – in a truly Orwellian way. If the FBI had to raid the mayor’s home, she must be very guilty.
The indictment – the raid, the political takedown, all relied on a single informant – the grifter, Mario Roberto Jaurez – whom even the feds acknowledged was the conman who proposed and executed the alleged bribe.
A Grifter as Star Witness
If there was a bribe, it was him. All him. The feds said it in their indictment. They just added that Duong helped the briber-turned-informant Juarez, and that the mayor knew she was being bribed, and so did her boyfriend. Knew but did nothing in return.
The bribe amount? $170,000. And in return? The mayor did no favors for Duong or the fraudster Jaurez.
The feds let Juarez off the hook for the alleged bribe, and as a bonus, let him off the hook for state felony check fraud for about $85,000. Even better, they let him off the hook for $5.3 million in mortgage and business fraud.
Juarez helped the feds build a case that was 31 times smaller in dollars than his fraud, but 1000 times bigger in headlines.
Headlines was what it was all about. To oust a mayor. That’s done.
Don’t be surprised if the feds drop the case. They’ll have to. There is only one criminal here – his name is Jaurez, and he is the star witness. That will come out.
The Department of Justice? A name glowing with Orwellian charm. They delivered exactly the justice they were told to deliver. In a future post, we will look at how Duong fits into to the politcal payback, which is the hallmark of the Department of Justice – paybakc, weaponized justice.
Hint: Duong (along with Thao) was indicted on the last day of the Biden administration.
