San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Ugly twists in Windsor saga
‘Sex tape’ claim emerges as mayor enlists Trump lobbyist to save job
With his political career on the brink of ruin amid multiple allegations of sexual assault, Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli turned to an old friend who had parlayed early loyalty and slight ties to Donald Trump into a multimilliondollar lobbying business in Washington.
With the help of Robert Stryk, described by the Associated Press as “one of the most successful lobbyists during the Trump presidency,” Foppoli has waged an aggressive campaign to save his job that has alarmed many residents and local officials already upset over the allegations revealed in a Chronicle investigation last month.
The campaign hinges on an apparent attempt to shift the conversation away from the original Foppoli accusers by fiercely attacking Esther Lemus, a Windsor Town Council colleague and Sonoma County deputy district attorney who herself has accused Foppoli of sexual assault in a report to the Sonoma County Sheriff ’s Office.
Leading the barrage is Stryk, who laces a frantic speaking style with vulgar attacks on perceived enemies and wild claims that he possesses embarrassing private information that he plans to release imminently.
Among other claims, Stryk told the The Chronicle that he may release a “sex tape” of Lemus and one of Foppoli’s friends captured by a surveillance camera at Foppoli’s winery north of Windsor. Stryk
“He is terrorizing me. He’s not beating me with his fists, but he’s continuing to violate and abuse me now with his viciousness in the media.” Esther Lemus, about Windsor Mayor Dominic Foppoli
“I don’t think there’s any viable defense against eight women who were all total strangers at the time of their credible accusations. So attacking the women isa lastditch effort of a desperate man who is finally facing the inevitable day that he would pay for decades of predatory actions.” Allison Britton, one of the first four women to accuse Dominic Foppoli of sexual assault
called this the “nuclear option.”
“She knows if that tape comes out it will destroy her life,” said Stryk, a former congressional aide whose prospects as a local politician ended in 2010 when he finished third in the mayoral election in Yountville after a series of conflicts with locals.
Lemus said she is petrified such a video may exist, telling The Chronicle she believes someone drugged her on the August 2020 night she was supposedly recorded at the winery, though she does not know who might have done it or how. She said she has gaps in her memory and was too intoxicated to consent to sexual contact.
“He is terrorizing me,” Lemus said of Foppoli. “He’s not beating me with his fists, but he’s continuing to violate and abuse me now with his viciousness in the media.”
Foppoli’s attorney, Orchid Vaghti, declined last week to answer a series of questions about Lemus’ allegations and about the response by Foppoli and Stryk to other women’s accounts of being sexually assaulted by the mayor. Vaghti said the questions were “outside of Mr. Foppoli’s personal knowledge,” “impinge on the ongoing investigation” or were “not worthy of comment.”
Across Sonoma County, elected officials have denounced Foppoli’s response to the scandal, though many details of his tactics have not been publicly revealed until now.
David Rabbitt, a county supervisor who has joined a chorus of people, including Foppoli’s older brother, in demanding the mayor’s resignation, said, “I think it’s appalling to see, in this case, a predator trying to pass himself off as a victim.”
“Textbook denial and narcissism,” said Chris Coursey, another county supervisor. “It’s the worst behavior in response to the worst behavior.”
This account of Foppoli’s response to the allegations against him is based on more than two dozen interviews, as well as a review of text messages, emails and voice mails sent by Foppoli, Stryk and other representatives of the mayor.
Foppoli has denied any misconduct, but has not addressed in detail the accounts of the women who have accused him of sexual assault. At an April 14 town meeting, the mayor — who was appointed to his seat in 2018 before winning the town’s first mayoral election this past November — said, “I know deep in my heart that I have done nothing criminally wrong and eventually will be cleared.”
In an April 10 statement, he said he would “choose not to share the true stories publicly at this juncture to avoid embarrassment to these women, who at one time engaged in consensual contact with me.”
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Foppoli’s strategy has unfolded in public statements and private phone calls in the six weeks since The Chronicle approached the mayor on April 5 with four women’s allegations of sexual assault. Since then, four more women, including Lemus, have come forward with allegations of sexual assault or misconduct, and a group of residents has started a campaign to recall Foppoli.
Foppoli, 38, has not only declared his innocence but has sought to undermine the women, while taking aim at former allies who have urged him to leave office, calling them “cowardly.”
At the same time, Foppoli has cast himself as a victim, saying Lemus “pressured” him into a sexual relationship — though he has not explained how this could happen. Lemus, who is married, has denied that allegation, while declining to answer questions about whether she has ever had consensual sexual contact with Foppoli.
Critics saw Foppoli’s move against Lemus as a preemptive strike before Lemus could level her own allegations.
“It seemed like he knew Councilwoman Lemus was coming forward … and trying to get ahead of it,” said Lynda Hopkins, another county supervisor. “That was sickening to me and revolting to me.”
Behind the scenes, Foppoli informally enlisted Stryk, who reached out to The Chronicle and other media outlets, making threats and baseless claims and promising to provide or publicly release images and emails that would discredit women who have come forward.
Among Stryk’s assertions to The Chronicle was that he had hired James O’Keefe, the rightwing figure known for conducting hiddencamera stings of liberals and journalists, to “interview” Foppoli’s accusers. The Chronicle sent an email Thursday seeking comment from O’Keefe through his Project Veritas, but did not receive a response.
“I don’t do ‘me too’ bullshit,” said Stryk, who once owned a winery in Oregon and has a long history of legal and financial disputes. He said he knew Foppoli because his wife went to high school with him in Santa Rosa.
“Everything I have,” he said of the purported images and emails, “I’m going to release it slowly. … We’re going to drip it out.”
That Foppoli would not go quietly became clear on April 14, when Windsor’s Town Council members called an emergency hearing so they could vote to demand his resignation. Foppoli showed up and then presided over the meeting as residents unleashed their anger on him. The vote was 21, with Foppoli opposed.
But the mayor’s scorchedearth campaign took on new significance when an attorney for Lemus sent Vaghti a ceaseanddesist letter.
The lawyer, Oscar Pardo of Santa Rosa, wrote in the April 30 letter that “Mr. Foppoli and/or his apparent agent, Mr. Robert Stryk, claim to be in possession of private and compromising video(s) taken of Ms. Lemus,” and that Stryk had expressed his intent of “leaking” them to the media.
Stryk has admitted as much, repeatedly telling The Chronicle — which refused his requests to speak off the record — that Foppoli has a video of Lemus engaged in a sexual act at Christopher Creek Winery, which the mayor coowns.
On April 11, Stryk sent text messages to a Chronicle editor saying he wanted to “negotiate the release” of “numerous Sex videos of Mrs. Lemus.” The editor responded via text that The Chronicle would not engage in such a negotiation.
Lemus told The Chronicle that her report to the Sheriff ’s Office detailed perceived threats Foppoli made to release the video. Her lawyer’s letter to Foppoli demands that any such videos be preserved for legal claims, or a criminal investigation, and not be distributed anywhere other than to law enforcement in any form.
“To date, we have not seen any videos though we have reason to believe they exist,” the letter stated. “We can only surmise that these videos have compromising sexual content to which Ms. Lemus never consented to participate in nor ever consented to be filmed and, it is our belief, that these are evidence of crimes against her.”
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The mayor of a town like Windsor has little power beyond that of a council member, running meetings and appointing people to boards and commissions but still representing just one of five votes. Many people who know Foppoli, however, said they are not surprised he is fighting calls for his resignation, saying that much of his identity is wrapped up in his role as mayor.
Until the town’s inaugural mayoral election last November, the position was essentially a taketurns task passed every year to a different council member. But Foppoli capitalized on the lead role like no other Windsor official before him, boost
ing a wave of development and energizing a small town that had long sought greater notice in Wine Country.
Foppoli wore his new title with pride: He had at least three polo shirts and a jacket made with Windsor’s logo, his name and the title “Mayor.” At public events, he sometimes wore a sash emblazoned with the title.
During the Kincade Fire of 2019, Foppoli emerged in news articles and on social media as a sort of local hero, posting live updates and conducting interviews from the fire lines. The next year, as the pandemic took hold, Foppoli started a web series, “Meals With the Mayors,” designed to bring more attention to local businesses.
“Dominic always wanted to be mayor,” said former Town Council Member and Mayor Bruce Okrepkie, who has called for Foppoli to resign. “I would say he liked the title.”
When The Chronicle contacted Foppoli on April 5, seeking an interview about allegations of sexual misconduct, the mayor initially responded by asking for written questions. “I’m in meetings all day and have a dinner with my 95 year old grandfather this evening,” he said in an email.
Reporters were instead contacted by Patrick Dorton, a Washington, D.C., media strategist whose business, Rational 360, recently collaborated with Stryk’s lobbying firm. Dorton said he was acting on the mayor’s behalf, seeking more information. The Chronicle shared details of four women’s sexual assault allegations with Dorton in an April 5 phone call and with Foppoli in an email.
That evening, a Chronicle reporter began receiving calls via the messaging service WhatsApp from a man with an account initialed “R.S.” The person made false statements about the reporter and refused to identify himself. When asked directly whether he was Robert Stryk, he said no.
Reporters informed the man that they could not discuss sensitive allegations with an unknown person. Nevertheless, he called 43 times in a span of two hours, stopping only when a reporter blocked the account.
That evening, Stryk called a Chronicle editor and identified himself. He said he could provide offtherecord evidence that would refute the allegations. But The Chronicle insisted that all communications remain on the record.
Stryk made dramatic accusations against the women in the story, alleging that more than one of them had sent nude photos to Foppoli, and had asked him to send explicit pictures of himself after the alleged assaults took place. Stryk has provided no evidence to back up the claim in the weeks since.
Allison Britton, one of four women in The Chronicle’s April 8 investigation who accused Foppoli of sexual assault, called Foppoli’s response to the allegations “predictable but disgusting.”
“I don’t think there’s any viable defense against eight women who were all total strangers at the time of their credible accusations,” Britton said. “So attacking the women is a lastditch effort of a desperate man who is finally facing the inevitable day that he would pay for decades of predatory actions.”
Stryk also said on April 5 that he and an associate at his lobbying firm had “killed” an investigation into Foppoli by the Santa Rosa Press Democrat two years earlier, suggesting the women’s accounts were not solid enough to publish.
Rick Green, who became executive editor of the North Bay newspaper this year, said in an email that, to the best of his knowledge, the staff “had no interaction with Stryk until April 2021.”
The Press Democrat has said it made a mistake in not allowing a reporter — who now works for The Chronicle and is one of the reporters leading its investigation of Foppoli — to pursue women’s allegations of sexual assault against Foppoli in 2019. In an April 9 editor’s note, Green apologized to readers and reasserted the organization’s commitment to “fair and assertive investigative journalism.”
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The day after The Chronicle first approached Foppoli, he called Rob Muelrath, a political consultant based in Santa Rosa who had run two of his campaigns.
Muelrath said in an interview that he listened as the mayor explained that four women had told The Chronicle that Foppoli sexually assaulted them. Foppoli told Muelrath he was “completely innocent” and needed help crafting a response.
The Chronicle story had not yet run. But reporters seeking an interview with Foppoli had sent him details of the women’s allegations, which ranged from groping to nonconsensual oral copulation to rape. In one incident in 2019, a woman, then 21, and her friend said they believed they had been drugged while attending a party at Christopher Creek Winery. Muelrath asked to see the email.
“When I read that, I severed ties,” Muelrath said. “I told him he needed a lawyer and he needed to resign.”
“I won’t,” Foppoli responded, in a text exchange reviewed by The Chronicle.
Foppoli ultimately declined to be interviewed by Chronicle reporters. The investigation was published April 8 with a statement issued by Foppoli’s thenattorney, Bethany Kristovich of Los Angeles, in which he “categorically” denied all the allegations and emphasized his support of women. Soon after, Foppoli hired a criminal lawyer, Vaghti of Santa Rosa.
Hours after The Chronicle published its story, Lemus said Foppoli called her and left a message, asking for her support.