When Mayor Daniel Lurie talked with Donald Trump on the phone last fall, reporters started to wonder: What, exactly, did the two discuss for 20 minutes?
The Sunshine Ordinance Task Force concluded that any records of the call (was it recorded? Did the mayor or his staff take notes?) should be released.
But the Mayor’s Office has refused to comply, saying any information would be covered by “attorney-client privilege,” which suggests there was a deputy city attorney present.
Now we are, maybe, a little bit, getting an idea of what happened—and the latest information suggests more collaboration between City Hall, the SFPD, and the Department of Homeland Security than anyone has yet admitted.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was speaking this morning to a police conference (she had just been fired on social media, but didn’t seem to know or acknowledge that) when Chris Galligan, the vice president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association asked whether the department could do more to help local agencies.
From the SF Standard, which broke the story:
“You maybe have some challenges in San Francisco just because of your state laws and local laws,” Noem replied. “Although you’ve got a mayor that works with us very well. He probably doesn’t want me to talk about it a lot, actually. But he has been cooperative and we have great conversations and talk quite often.”
MissionLocal reports that maybe Noem and Lurie don’t actually talk “often.” That would not be a surprise: Noem, like many in the Trump Administration, has issues with telling the truth.
But that’s not the issue here. The vice president of the SFPOA, an organization that by law is not supposed to cooperate with ICE, asked how the locals could work better with the feds—and the person who until today oversaw ICE said that the mayor of San Francisco, who by law is not supposed to do anything to cooperate with ICE, was “very cooperative.”
The Mayor’s Office has no comment on Noem’s statement. Noem has nothing more to say, I’m sure, since she’s no longer the head of homeland security.
This should make all of us at least a little bit nervous.
