OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) — A defendant in the bribery and corruption case surrounding former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao allegedly took a secret, compromising video of Attorney General Rob Bonta.
That’s just one of the explosive accusations in a letter obtained by ABC7 I-Team’s Dan Noyes that appears to have sped up the FBI investigation.
The letter may also help to explain why Bonta spent $468,000 of campaign contributions on legal fees, to help him deal with FBI investigators. Bonta has not been charged in this case, and there’s no indication he is a suspect.
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In the letter dated May 9, 2024, to Attorney General Rob Bonta, Mario Juarez writes about his business partners from Oakland-based California Waste Solutions: “I have firsthand knowledge of various criminal activities perpetrated by the Duong family, including money laundering, illegal political donations, falsification of contracts, and exploitation of straw donors. These activities extend to facilitating prostitution for elected officials, including minors.”
“Rob Bonta, Attorney General, knew far more of what was going on in this investigation with the Duongs than any of us knew,” said Steve Tavares with East Bay Insider.
Tavares runs the political substack, East Bay Insiders. He first broke news of the Juarez letter, and the I-Team obtained it from another source.
“The letter shows that Mario was despondent and that he was basically going to get back, retribution against the Duongs,” said Tavares.
Juarez was partners with David and Andy Duong in Evolutionary Homes, a company that converted shipping containers to housing for the homeless. But Juarez writes that on May 3, 2024, the Duongs locked him out of the showroom on the Oakland waterfront, and that they ordered an attack by a group of armed men. “I was threatened with firearms and a knife, assaulted, and robbed of personal belongings including a gold chain and Rolex watch,” wrote Juarez.
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The I-Team obtained photos showing Juarez’s injuries, his swollen face and head. He goes on to say he “was coerced into delivering an apology to David Duong… while Andy and Kristina Duong recorded the interaction.”
Then, just one month later… Juarez got into a shootout with men who broke into his SUV. Tavares believes it’s no coincidence that, just days later, the FBI raided the homes of David and Andy Duong, and of then-Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and her partner, Andre Jones.
“11 days later, the raids happen. It strongly suggests that the FBI had found Mario Juarez, made him the star witness, and when this came, when this got out that he was cooperating, they moved quick,” said Tavares.
Some of what Juarez wrote in the letter appears in the federal bribery and corruption indictment; his name isn’t there but he’s believed to be listed as “co-conspirator 1.” Wilson Leung is a former federal prosecutor.
“It is interesting that this letter came out, gosh, more than a year ago now, and some of its allegations seem to have been proven sufficiently correct so that the feds are willing to take action on some of them,” said Leung.
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Lawyers for Andy Duong emailed the I-Team that he “vigorously denies the baseless allegations in this letter.” David Duong’s lawyers say he “strongly denies” them. They both argue that Juarez has credibility issues and cannot be believed.
Dan Newman, spokesperson for Bonta’s re-election campaign, confirms the Attorney General received the letter and forwarded it to the FBI. Juarez also wrote Bonta should know “that Andy Duong in particular has a recording of you in a compromising situation and that he routinely engages in entertaining elected and other officials to extract recordings without their knowledge for later use in blackmail circumstances.”
“It’s uncertain what that means. It’s also uncertain whether that’s true, so there’s a lot of questions that this letter prompts,” said Leung.
Bonta’s spokesperson says the attorney general is not concerned about that report of a compromising video, and says Juarez wrote that letter as “a desperate guy at a desperate moment with walls closing in.”
Take a look at more stories by the ABC7 News I-Team.
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