Bribery charge against Apple official tossed

A judge dismissed a bribery charge Tuesday against Apple’s global head of security, saying there was no evidence he had acted with a corrupt intent when he offered to give iPad computers to the Santa Clara County Sheriff ’s Office, which was about to issue valuable gun permits for Apple’s security staff.

A county grand jury indicted Thomas Moyer in November for proposing to donate 200 computers, worth nearly $70,000, to Sheriff Laurie Smith’s office after negotiating concealedweapons permits for the executiveprotection team at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters.

Such permits are rarely issued in California’s most populous counties, and prosecutors contended they were granted in exchange for contributions to Smith, who won her most difficult reelection campaign in November 2018. Smith has not been accused of wrongdoing, but two top aides, Undersheriff Rick Sung and Capt. James Jensen, have both been indicted on charges of soliciting bribes.

In Tuesday’s ruling, however, Superior Court Judge Eric Geffon said that when Moyer first offered the computers to Sung and Jensen in February 2019, he had already been assured that the gun permits would be approved. Smith herself had given him that approval at a meeting in June 2018, and Sung and another officer had reaffirmed it in November, Geffon said.

There was “no evidence that suddenly, on Feb. 8, 2019, Moyer was told or believed that the CCW (carrying a concealed weapon) permits would not be delivered unless the sheriff ’s office received something in exchange,” the judge said. That means, he said, that prosecutors lacked evidence Moyer had “acted with the required corrupt intent” to be guilty of bribery.

The ruling does not affect the charges against Sung and Jensen, who are also accused of trading concealedweapons permits for monetary contributions to Smith’s 2018 campaign.

The district attorney’s office opened its investigation in 2018 after public records revealed that a manager at AS Solution, a Silicon Valley private security firm, had received a gun permit just months after he donated $45,000 toward Smith’s reelection effort. AS Solutions said it cooperated with prosecutors in the investigation.

Apple dropped plans to deliver computers to the sheriff ’s office in August 2019 when news media began reporting the issue.

In response to the ruling, Ed Swanson, one of Moyer’s attorneys, said, “As we have said from the outset, Tom is an honorable man who committed no crime.”

Moyer, in a statement issued by his lawyers, thanked the judge “for giving this case such careful consideration, and for allowing me to move forward with my life,” and also thanked Apple, his family and friends for standing by him.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen’s office said it believes the grand jury, which “heard direct evidence ... from witnesses in this public corruption case, correctly indicted Mr. Moyer for bribery. We stand by the grand jury’s decision and are evaluating our options.”