Lobbyist was link to halls of power
It started as a run-of-the-mill FBI investigation into alleged gang activity in San Francisco’s Chinatown and mushroomed into a political corruption case that brought down a state senator and pointed fingers, but no criminal charges, at Mayor Ed Lee and other city officials.
Some of the mysteries of the case against former state Sen. Leland Yee, alleged gang leader Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow and more than two dozen other defendants may unfold when Yee returns to court in October for sentencing on his guilty plea, and when Chow and his co-defendants go to trial over the next year. Some secrets may remain sealed in court documents and undisclosed prosecution strategies.
But by most indications so far, the link between
the alleged crimes on the streets and the corridors of power is one person: Keith Jackson, 50, a former San Francisco school board member and president, City Hall lobbyist, consultant and Yee fundraiser, and now a convicted felon.
The connection is suggested in newly released court documents and asserted, vociferously, by Chow’s lawyers. Curtis Briggs, an attorney for Chow, said one court filing — which he can’t disclose because it’s sealed — describes prosecutors telling a judge that “the political corruption side of the investigation, it’s because of Keith Jackson’s insistence that we got into it.”
The political probe included an FBI sting operation against Yee, who was indicted last year along with Chow. It also involved investigators’ scrutiny of fundraising and other activities by Lee and others inside City Hall who were named in newly disclosed prosecution documents but never charged.
The documents indicate that an FBI informant discussed business development with Lee in 2012 after giving at least $10,000 to help pay off his campaign debt. Promising political help in exchange for funds would violate bribery laws. But the documents do not reveal any illicit promises by the mayor, who has denied wrongdoing.
Jackson and Yee admitted July 1, when they pleaded guilty to racketeering charges, that they had conspired to solicit tens of thousands of dollars from undercover agents as purported contributions to Yee’s unsuccessful campaign for mayor of San Francisco in 2011, and his short-lived campaign for California secretary of state last year. In exchange for the donations, the FBI said, Yee promised votes on legislation and other political favors, and agreed to smuggle firearms from the Philippines.
An FBI agent’s March 2014 affidavit spelled out the relationships behind the criminal charges: Jackson, a decade after his school board service in the mid-1990s, was a consultant to the Ghee Kung Tong, the Chinese American community organization headed by Chow, who introduced Jackson to a supposed businessman and marijuana grower who, unbeknownst to Chow, was a federal agent.
Jackson soon enlisted his son, Brandon, and sports agent Marlon Sullivan in various schemes concocted by the agent, including gun-running and a fictitious murderfor-hire plot, the FBI said. Brandon Jackson and Sullivan pleaded guilty on July 1 to separate racketeering charges.
Jackson connection
Keith Jackson brought Yee and the federal agent together in May 2011 by making the first of several requests to the agent to contribute to the senator’s campaign for mayor against Ed Lee. It was also the first step in the events that led to Yee’s arrest, suspension from the Senate and guilty plea.
The FBI affidavit, which accompanied a federal grand jury indictment against Yee and his co-defendants, didn’t mention any connection between Jackson and Lee or other politicians. That link is being asserted by Chow’s lawyers in a longshot attempt to have the charges against their client dismissed as a case of selective prosecution. Prosecutors, they contend, wrongfully accused Chow while ignoring or dismissing evidence of crimes committed by others.
One document obtained from prosecutors and released by Chow’s attorneys on Tuesday describes a wiretapped conversation in April 2013 between Jackson and Nazly Mohajer, a member of the city’s Human Rights Commission.
Apparently while discussing fundraising, Jackson is quoted as telling Mohajer, “I figured whatever we did for the mayor, I take that as a wash. It’s all good.” Mohajer then asked Keith Jackson whether Lee had come through for him, the document said, and Jackson replied, “No, he ain’t come through for nobody.”
It’s not clear what they were talking about. But Briggs, the author of Tuesday’s filing that seeks dismissal of Chow’s indictment, said in an interview that it was part of Jackson’s campaign to tap an apparent source of campaign funds for Lee and other local officeseekers.
When an undercover agent started attending dinners sponsored by Chow’s organization, Briggs said, Jackson approached the agent and told him, “You’ve got money. We’ve got to get you involved with these city politicians.” The government resisted at first, according to stillsealed prosecution documents, Briggs said, but then dispatched another agent, posing as an Atlanta businessman and drug dealer, who launched a full-fledged corruption investigation.
Another wiretap report, made public by Briggs on Tuesday, describes the newly dispatched federal agent speaking with Zula Jones, a Human Rights Commission staff member, in April 2012 about the agent’s $10,000 contribution to Lee. Jones told him the check was divided into small amounts, evidently to avoid the appearance of violating San Francisco’s $500 limit on individual donations. “You pay to play here,” Jones is quoted as telling the agent in another conversation.
Meeting with Lee
According to another government document, the same agent and two associates had met with Lee, Jones and Mohajer earlier in April 2012 and discussed “bringing private business interests and development into San Francisco.” The document said Mohajer introduced the agent to Lee as a campaign contributor, but did not quote the mayor as making any promises in return.
Jackson appears elsewhere in the prosecution documents as trying to “build a relationship” between a supposed developer, who was actually a government informant, and Supervisor Malia Cohen; as a go-between for the same informant and Derf Butler, a businessman who raised money for Supervisor London Breed; and as the source of reports that the Rev. Amos Brown, a former city supervisor and president of San Francisco’s NAACP chapter, was trying to squelch Breed’s investigation of Henry Alvarez, fired director of the San Francisco Housing Authority, who allegedly had authorized repair work at Brown’s home.
The documents, Briggs asserted in his court filing, show Cohen, Breed and Brown, among others, “implicated in dramatic pay-to-play schemes” and implicate Lee in bribery. That’s only his interpretation, however, and neither the FBI reports nor any other publicly released prosecution documents contain any such accusations.
The reports had a sadly familiar ring to Tom Ammiano, the former city supervisor and Democratic state assemblyman. While accusing politicians of wrongdoing is obviously part of the defense lawyers’ litigation strategy, he said, “that doesn’t mean it’s not true. ... People get greedy,” especially in a campaign system awash in money, he said.
Fairly or not, Ammiano said, the allegations made by Chow’s attorneys are likely to hit home with voters. He suggested an investigation by “some trustworthy independent entity” to clear the air.
The only response so far from U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag’s office, which is prosecuting the cases against Yee, Chow and the Jacksons, has been to accuse Chow’s lawyers of violating a court order that prohibits disclosure of evidence provided to defense lawyers by prosecutors if the evidence might endanger others.
Publication of the names of individuals who haven’t been charged is “inherently a risk to their safety and security,” prosecutors said in a filing asking a judge to seal the newly released documents from public view. During the federal investigation, they said, undercover agents have reported that Chow “has frequently threatened to eliminate his rivals and anyone perceived to be a threat to him.”
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer refused to block public access to the documents, saying — without deciding whether Chow’s lawyers had violated his order — that locking up the information now “would serve no useful purpose” because it has been widely publicized.