The criminal case shaking sheriff’s office
How big checks, privileged permits and a Starbucks meeting color probe
The meet-up went down in the parking lot of a San Jose Starbucks, as customers streamed through the front door and the faint hiss of an espresso machine offered a soundtrack.
David Sanders, the CEO of a Santa Clara computer services firm and a campaign contributor to Sheriff Laurie Smith, opened the trunk of his car and pointed to his handgun. Smith’s close aide, Capt. James Jensen, took a glance. A short time later, the sheriff’s office gave Sanders a valuable privilege under California’s tough firearms laws: the right to carry it as a concealed weapon.
“Did you feel a little awkward pulling out a gun at Starbucks and showing it to Captain Jensen?” Deputy District Attorney John Chase
asked Sanders when he testified later before a criminal grand jury.
“No, not at all,” Sanders replied.
The incident was a brazen riff on California’s carefully crafted concealed-gun permit law, but it emerges as typical of Santa Clara County’s freewheeling, payto-play version of the process, as alleged in testimony detailed in 900 pages of grand jury transcripts released late last month.
In an instance that spurred an ongoing criminal investigation, an executive security firm with its sights set on a stack of permits was given a $90,000 donation target from a Smith aide. It came with an implicit message: Pay up, and soon you’ll be packing heat. Otherwise, your forms go into a filing cabinet on the fourth floor of the sheriff’s Younger Avenue office, never to be looked at again.
Already, with conspiracy and bribery indictments of Jensen, attorney and fundraiser Christopher Schumb and two others, the scheme stands as one of the biggest political corruption cases to hit the South Bay in more than four decades. The transcripts provide tantalizing hints — although little direct evidence — that the ongoing investigation is getting closer to the sixterm sheriff, one of the region’s best-known local politicians.
Smith invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to testify to the grand jury.
“The conundrum she faces, is that either she knew — which suggests a corrupt decision-making process — or she didn’t know, which suggests an ineffective management practice,” said Ann Skeet, senior director of leadership ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.
“Given how long this has been an issue, that’s a problem.”
Jensen, Schumb, and codefendants Harpaul Nahal and Michael Nichols are scheduled to appear in court Monday to continue their arraignment proceedings in the case. On Thursday, Judge Eric Geffon rejected a defense motion to disqualify District Attorney Jeff Rosen based on his past friendship with and fundraising support from Schumb.
Front-door service for some, ‘left in the drawer’ for most
For years it’s been an open secret in Santa Clara County that political supporters of Smith received special treatment from her agency. And the issue that has drawn the strongest scrutiny is the sheriff’s allocation of concealed-carry weapon permits, the licenses that allow civilians to legally carry handguns in public.
The agency has been stingy with the privilege — about 150 permits were issued or renewed between 2014 and 2019, out of over 750 applications. But it has been widely noticed that at least a quarter of the recipients had contributed to Smith’s campaigns, in amounts of $100 to $1,000.
In Alameda, Contra Costa and San Mateo counties, the sheriff’s offices grant the permits at twice the rate of Santa Clara County and typically have twice as many active licenses at any given moment.
The grand jury testimony gives the first inside look at the casual way the process worked: Jensen would make house calls to deliver VIPs their gun-permit paperwork, at least once to a judge, and in a few instances, to players for the San Jose Sharks. The Starbucks on Coleman Avenue and Taylor Street in San Jose, a five-minute drive from sheriff’s headquarters, was practically a satellite office for preferred gun permits, although one meeting, involving the alleged deal at the heart of the current indictment, happened on outdoor tables at the Jamba Juice next door — the Starbucks was closed.
But convenience was just one of the perks sheriff’s aides offered the VIPs. The indictment also contends, via seven felony charges against Jensen of falsifying paperwork, that some applicants didn’t even have to go to the gun range to show that they knew how to safely use their firearms.
Among the apparent beneficiaries of that privilege was County Supervisor Mike Wasserman. In his testimony to the grand jury, Wasserman insisted he simply didn’t remember how he fulfilled the firearms safety requirement to carry two concealed pistols.
Jensen faces the most serious charges in the case in large part because grand jury testimony painted him as the trusted linchpin of the operation. The gregarious former public information officer rapidly climbed the ranks from sergeant to lieutenant to captain as he became the office’s portal for political patronage.
Three of Jensen’s PIO successors prepared the permits for approval at their desks, just a few yards from Smith’s own office in the sheriff’s Younger Avenue headquarters.
When asked who was “the driving force in processing CCWs,” former PIO Richard Glennon testified, “Captain Jensen by far.” But Glennon’s clear understanding was that Jensen was acting at Smith’s behest.
“It quickly became apparent that when I took over the position that (Jensen) was still kind of the go-between between the sheriff and myself. He would basically bring me the applications that she had approved to move forward,” Glennon testified.
That was on top of Jensen’s unofficial duties. According to Glennon, Jensen “was active in running campaign events. He would be going to a lot of the lunches. During the campaign events, he was the one at the door collecting the money.”
When prosecutor Chase asked Glennon what Jensen told him to do with typical applications, those that didn’t come from Smith’s political supporters, he replied, “They were basically put in a drawer and left in the drawer.”
That would be a violation of state law, which requires a response be given within 90 days.
The plan unravels after a tip and a car stop
This was how the process worked until last year when the processing of new concealed-carry weapon permits was halted amid the DA investigation. It all seemed to unravel after an executive security agent with no history of support for Smith forced his way into the VIP realm — with a really big check.
The investigation found that Christian West, then CEO of the Seattle-based executive security firm AS Solution, and AS executive projects manager Martin Nielsen had begun discussing how they could get permits for their security employees after a frightening April 2018 shooting at the YouTube campus in San Bruno.
Nielsen testified that the shooting was “the 9/11 of Silicon Valley, where a lot of clients started to want to have armed personnel.” It was also a big opportunity for security professionals: Among the firm’s clients were executives with Facebook.
Both he and West knew it was notoriously difficult to get concealed-gun licenses in Santa Clara County. So Nielsen said he contacted his friend Nichols, CEO of Milpitas firearms dealer The Gun Co.
Nichols then introduced Nielsen to Jensen, and they “agreed in principle” to exchange political donations for concealed-carry permits. The deal came out to $90,000 in donations in exchange for 10-12 CCW permits, Nielsen and West testified.
In October 2018, according to text messages examined by investigators, Nielsen, at the direction of Jensen, went to Schumb’s downtown San Jose law office. There he handed over a $45,000 check made out to the Santa Clara County Public Safety Alliance, a pro-Smith independent expenditure committee whose finances were co-managed by Schumb.
But a short time later, their cover was blown -although it would take months more before the sheriff’s office realized it.
Shortly after Smith’s 2018 re-election — her most competitive contest to date — the Metro newspaper asked the DA’s office about the $45,000 donation. It was the first prosecutors had heard of it, and they dug in.
On July 21, 2019, DA investigators pulled over Nielsen’s car and served him with a search warrant for his home. Four days later, Nielsen, now cooperating with the DA and carrying a cellphone equipped with a recording app, met with Jensen at Starbucks.
Investigator Lacy Hyland examined the audio from that meeting, and both she and Nielsen told the grand jury that Jensen directed Nielsen to donate the second $45,000 to the Sheriff’s Advisory Board. Jensen specifically characterized their deal as a “quid pro quo” as he cautioned Nielsen against mentioning concealed-gun permits to advisory board president Joseph Ziegler, Hyland testified.
A week later, the DA’s office served search warrants at the sheriff’s headquarters.
The grand jury convened July 20 of this year and handed down its indictments Aug. 6. On Aug. 31, on the first arraignment date for the case, West pleaded guilty as part of a deal to help the prosecution in exchange for charging and sentencing leniency. Nielsen and AS Facebook team manager Jack Stromgren, accused of instructing his agents to fill in false in-county addresses on their CCW applications, testified they were in line for similar consideration as West.
The grand jury transcripts offer some evidence against Smith’s closest aide, Undersheriff Rick Sung, who also invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when called to testify. Grand jurors were told that Jensen said in an interview with a DA investigator that it was Sung who told him to direct the first $45,000 to Schumb.
Will it reach the sheriff?
Still, Smith remains the most intriguing figure and the biggest enigma in the case.
Nowhere in the transcripts is there testimony that explicitly links Smith to the alleged scheme, beyond her statutory authority as the only person in her office who can approve CCW permits. In fact, none of the PIO’s who testified ever recalled actually witnessing Smith sign one. Personal attorneys for Smith and Sung have said their clients have no culpability in the indicted crimes.
Rosen has said more charges are coming in the case. But absent more evidence, the biggest threat to the sheriff appears to be political rather than criminal.
Garrick Percival, chair of the political science department at San Jose State University, said the public will be skeptical that the defendants acted on their own despite needing Smith’s signature to carry out the plot, especially given that she’s faced a multitude of accusations and lawsuits over the issue in the past. But he’s far from convinced she’s finished.
“It’s a stretch to ask voters to believe that these are all altruistic decisions” by the defendants, Percival said. “But she has been able to do that before. Voters either looked the other way or people didn’t have a lot of knowledge or interest.”