Official’s 49ers leak trial pushed to March
Anthony Becker, the Santa Clara City Council member charged with leaking a confidential grand jury report to a San Francisco 49ers lobbyist and then lying about it under oath, will not go to trial until next year.
At a hearing Wednesday in Santa Clara County Superior Court, Judge Daniel Nishigaya said Becker’s perjury trial could begin in March 2024. But Becker’s lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Chris Montoya, said March might be too soon, because he needs time to read what he described as a huge amount of documentary evidence gathered by the district attorney’s investigators.
“I just got another discovery dump of 1,000 pages,” Montoya told the court. The judge set Nov. 29 for another hearing on the trial date.
Becker, 35, ran for mayor last year with the help of nearly $2.5 million in campaign contributions from the 49ers and Jed York, the team’s CEO. But Becker narrowly lost to incumbent Lisa Gillmor, a longtime 49ers critic.
In April, Becker was indicted on one felony charge of perjury and one misdemeanor count of failing to perform his official duty, for election-year improprieties allegedly involving the NFL team. Becker pleaded not guilty. He faces up to four years in jail if convicted.
Setting a trial date in the politically charged case had been postponed twice, initially because Becker said he needed time to find a lawyer. Instead, the council member, who left his job as a content moderator for the Accenture consulting firm earlier this year, is being represented by the public defender’s office. Becker earns about $2,000 per month as a council member.
At issue in Becker’s case is a scathing investigative report by a civil grand jury that accused the 49ers of improper meddling in Santa Clara politics. After a months-long probe, the government watchdog panel harshly criticized Becker and four other council members who consistently supported the 49ers on issues related to Levi’s Stadium, which is publicly owned but operated by the team. They regularly “put the 49ers’ interests ahead of the city’s interests” on matters of financial interest to the team, according to the report, and may have violated city and state ethics laws.
The report was scheduled for public release Oct. 10, roughly a month before the 2022 election. Becker received a confidential draft copy of the document in advance and allegedly leaked it to Rahul Chandhok, then the 49ers’ top lobbyist.
Chandhok soon publicly attacked the report, accusing the civil grand jury of “corruption” three days before the document was made public. He also indicated the 49ers had researched the home addresses and religious practices of some grand jurors. Despite these efforts to discredit the report, and even though Becker’s campaign outspent Gillmor’s about eight to one, she won reelection.
After the election, a criminal grand jury subpoenaed more than 20 witnesses, including 49ers President Al Guido, to determine how the confidential document was mishandled.
In November, according to the indictment, Becker falsely testified that he did not leak the document and had no contact with Chandhok in the days before the leak. But Chandhok told the grand jury Becker sent him the document on an encrypted communication app.
Chandhok left the 49ers shortly after testifying, reporting on his LinkedIn profile that he took a job as chief external relations officer with the U.S. Soccer Federation in Chicago. The organization has not responded to questions from the Chronicle to confirm Chandhok works there.
The 49ers have not been charged with a crime, but Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen has said the team’s “smearing” of the investigative civil grand jury was “shameful and wrong.” He has described Becker as a “a politician favoring deep-pocketed special interests instead of his own constituents.”
Becker, a former city planning commissioner, built his political career on funding from the 49ers. In 2020, he earned election to the City Council as part of a slate backed by $2.9 million in donations from York and the team. After taking office, Becker and other council members who had been supported by the 49ers began meeting privately with Chandhok, the team’s lobbyist, and voting its way on a long list of city issues.
Then, in last year’s mayor’s race, the 49ers pumped $2.5 million into two independent expenditure committees to support Becker’s campaign.
Between Oct. 4 and Oct. 11 — the week when the team obtained the confidential report — it donated $519,000 to the Becker committees, records show. In the months since Becker was indicted, a procession of local residents has attended City Council meetings and urged Becker to resign. Becker usually doesn’t respond, but he addressed the issue at a July meeting, according to the Santa Clara News Online website.
“In the last few meetings we’ve had, there’s been numerous comments demanding my resignation from the City Council,” Becker said. “The one thing I’m going to say, and I’m going to say it very clearly, is in America there is a thing called due process, and I have no plans of stepping down.”
At the meeting, Becker joined the other 49ersbacked council members in voting down a proposal to set up a city ethics commission.
By city law, Becker would lose his office if convicted of the perjury charge.