CEO accused of beating had high-profile backing
The chattering class is all abuzz about what a pair of major political players did — or didn’t do — to help digital-ad entrepreneur Gurbaksh Chahal beat 45 felony domestic violence charges in San Francisco after he allegedly punched his girlfriend 100 times over half an hour in his Rincon Hill penthouse. All recorded by in-home security cameras. First up: Steve Westly, former state controller, prospective Democratic candidate for governor in 2018 and board member of RadiumOne, the digital ad company that Chahal founded in 2009. He was worried the effect the 2013 charges would have on the company’s pending stock offering.
Second: Willie Brown, former San Francisco mayor, current Chronicle columnist and longtime lawyer — and still a major mover and shaker in the city. He took on Chahal’s case.
The story, as laid out by the Wall Street Journal’s Jeff Elder, goes like this:
On Dec. 3, 2013, Westly e-mailed Chahal saying he had spoken to Brown, and that the former mayor knew District Attorney George Gascón and “may be able to ‘back him off’ ” the charges, adding that Brown is a “very good deal broker.”
Chahal wrote back to Westly: “Just met him. Wants $1 million if he can make this go away. Just gave him a $250K retainer.”
Westly responded: “Wow. That’s pricey, but probably worth it if he can make it happen. I suspect he will pull out all the stops to get this done.”
Brown had an interesting explanation for why he took on such an apparently distasteful client. He told us Friday that “$1 million was the fee that I hoped (Chahal) could not pay. I did not want to deal with a client that had 45 counts of domestic violence, but he said, ‘All right.’ ”
So Brown started out with a $250,000 retainer from Chahal, which he used to assemble a team of criminal trial lawyers.
According to the Journal, subsequent e-mails between Westly and Brown’s assistant show Westly trying to schedule meetings between Gascón and Brown. The e-mails don’t show that the two ever talked about the case, and Gascón’s office told us there are no records of any meeting.
Brown said he had never tried to meet with Gascón because it would have been pointless. “Any district attorney who willingly dismisses charges like domestic violence is risking his or her re-election,” Brown said.
Gascón said the suggestion he had been vulnerable to any pressure from the ex-mayor was absurd.
“We prosecuted that case to the fullest extent possible given the facts and circumstances, and even placed an extra lawyer and investigator on the case,” Gascón said.
Attorneys on Chahal’s defense team did talk with prosecutors about what evidence would be admissible, Brown said. The central issue was the security-camera video, which the defense maintained had been illegally seized by San Francisco police without a warrant. Prosecutors argued that Chahal could have erased the video had police waited to obtain a warrant.
In the end, the case largely did go away — though not because the D.A. caved. Gascón’s prosecutors pressed ahead with the felony charges, but in April 2014 they ran into Superior Court Judge Brendan Conroy — who threw out the video as inadmissible.
To make matters worse for the prosecution, Chahal’s ex-girlfriend refused to testify.
Upshot: Chahal pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of battery. Conroy put him on three years’ probation and required that he attend a domestic violence training class and perform community service.
Chahal was later fired from RadiumOne. His attorney, Patty Glaser, told the Journal that Brown had nothing to do with the outcome of the case.
Brown later returned $198,400 of Chahal’s $250,000 retainer, saying he “didn’t do the work” to earn the full amount.
“I got about $20,000 — the rest went to the other attorneys,” Brown said.
As for why a former mayor would get involved with such a sordid case?
“Everyone is entitled to legal representation,” Brown said, “particularly if there is a desperate need and they can afford it.”
Westly has since left the RadiumOne board. Calls to his office were not returned.
Should be interesting to see if he makes that run for governor.
Offline: BART tracks aren’t the only part of the system needing a fix — the transit agency’s e-mail system went down before daybreak Tuesday, and a team of staff and outside consultants was still scrambling at the end of the week to get it up and running.
“It doesn’t impact riders and service, but it does impact BART doing business,” said transit agency spokeswoman Alicia Trost.
BART insiders tell us frustrated staffers at Oakland headquarters weren’t getting much done, because their inhouse communication and sharing of documents depends on the 4-year-old system. They even use it to clock in and out of work.
Trost, however, downplayed the problem, saying employees were still able to call or send texts to communicate.
They could even get up from their desks and talk to one another, she said. But how weird is that?
Sunk: Tough luck for the 58 San Francisco Bay bar pilots hoping to get their pay raised to almost $500,000 a year.
In a late-night move Thursday, the state Legislature tabled until 2016 a measure that would increase the bar pilots’ pay by 10 percent over the next four years. They now make an average of $453,000 a year.
The increase was staunchly opposed by the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, representing shippers and agricultural interests in the region — and which also pays the pilots to steer ships around the bay.
“These few dozen bar pilots already make more than any other pilots on the West Coast, but turned down an offer of an incremental 3 percent increase,” said association Vice President Mike Jacobs. “They’ve rolled the dice and lost.”
“Wants $1 million if he can make this go away. Just gave him a $250K retainer.” E-mail by Gurbaksh Chahal, accused of beating girlfriend, about legal representation by Willie Brown