By now, anyone who is paying attention to local politics knows that the ethical issues around District Attorney Brooke Jenkins just got a lot deeper.
Jenkins was already under fire—and possibly under investigation by the state Bar—for the money she collected from a committee that had links to the recall campaign while she was stumping for the recall.
Then last week Joe Eskenazi at Mission Local broke a huge scoop: Jenkins, just before she left the DA’s Office last year, sent confidential files to the private email of a colleague who was also leaving the office—and information from those files was used in the campaign to recall Chesa Boudin.
That, experts agree, would be a serious violation of professional ethics, and possibly a crime. From MissionLocal:
Disseminating police reports to parties who do not have a professional attachment to the case, and using such materials for personal or political purposes, was described to Mission Local by veteran prosecutors as a grave breach of conduct. Disseminating a criminal history such as a rap sheet, however, is a potentially more serious matter: The California penal code states that the furnishing of such a record to a person who is not authorized to receive it is a misdemeanor.
Jenkins told the Chronicle this was all a mistake. But legal ethics experts told MissionLocal that’s nonsense: She had no role in the relevant case, and should never have accessed the files in the first place.
John Hamasaki, who is challenging Jenkins, called on the attorney general to investigate:
“We need a DA who obeys the law. When appointed DA Jenkins believed herself to be above the law – she is failing the citizens of San Francisco. I am calling on Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate these criminal allegations in order to restore faith in our justice system.”
The amazing political element of this: None of the people who support her seem to care. At least not in public.
This from Sup. Rafael Mandelman:
“Regardless of this story, she in my view is the only person on the ballot capable of doing the job of district attorney, so I’m not changing my endorsement,” Mandelman told The Examiner. “This news does not change the reality she’s doing a far better job than her predecessor or either of the people (challenging her).”
More:
Supervisor Myrna Melgar announced her endorsement of Jenkins on Thursday, squarely in the middle of the saga.
Melgar told The Examiner she met with Jenkins three times before making the endorsement. The supervisor was skeptical of Jenkins’ policy that would allow criminal prosecution of juveniles as adults, for example, but is unimpressed by any of Jenkins’ challengers and supports women running for office.
“The bulk of allegations about Brooke are not specific to her policies,” Melgar said.
So it doesn’t matter that the DA has been accused of serious misconduct that might rise to the level of criminal activity; as long as she talks about being Tough on Crime, it’s all just fine.
Imagine if one of the progressive supervisors were accused of illegally accessing confidential city information and using it for their own political purposes. You think all these folks would be fine with that as long as they agreed with the progressive’s “policies?”
There has been a long tolerance for corruption in public office in San Francisco, going back to the time when Willie Brown was mayor.
The reality is that it matters not a bit at the ballot box whether Rafael Mandelman or Myrna Melgar endorse Brooke Jenkins. In fact, by the time all of this news broke, I suspect most people in San Francisco had already voted.
And if there are any investigations by the state Bar or the Attorney General’s Office, that process will take months.
This is, of course, the big problem with ethics complaints during election cycles; a candidate can break the law with impunity, win the election, and worry about paying a fine (typically rather modest) way later. Often, the “settlements” of these cases are quiet, cost the politician very little, and nobody pays much attention.
So there’s little incentive to follow the law in the first place. Why bother? Nobody seems to care.
