A recently-unsealed affidavit in the criminal case pending against
Los Angeles County DA George Gascón's Ethics and Integrity Assistant
shows how Gascón’s management team believes they are above
accountability and gives a stunning behind-the-scenes look of how Soros DA lieutenants operate on behalf of their elected bosses.
That Assistant District Attorney, Diana Teran, was arrested in late
April and charged with 11 felonies related to the "unauthorized use of
data from confidential, statutorily-protected peace officer files."
According to a press release from California Attorney General Rob Bonta,
Teran "accessed computer data including numerous confidential peace
officer files in 2018, while working as a Constitutional Policing
Advisor at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD), and,
after joining the LADA in January 2021, impermissibly used that data at
the LADA."
And, according to a report by RedState's Managing
Editor Jennifer Van Laar, there are claims by former LASD deputies that
Teran engaged in unethical conduct related to Internal Affairs Bureau
investigations during her time at that agency.
READ MORE: A Massive Scandal Is Brewing in Los Angeles After DA George Gascon's Number 3 Is Charged With 11 Felonies
Among the many eye-opening revelations from the affidavit of California DOJ Special Agent Tony Baca, a computer crime investigator with 21 years of experience:
- The
investigation began after Teran's boss, Joseph Iniguez, threatened to
use his position to put police officers who arrested his fiancé for DUI
in December 2021 on the Brady list.
- Though Teran is charged with 11 felony counts, her conduct could have been charged much more aggressively.
- An
investigative criminal grand jury was used in this case, and the
investigator states, “I have not included each and every fact known to
me concerning this investigation.” It is possible the unethical conduct
runs much deeper than just an 11-count felony filing against one
executive.
- Because the case was filed so conservatively, the
prosecutors have limited their case to the incidents in which they have
overwhelming evidence.
Who is Diana Teran?
Teran has been working in Los Angeles criminal law and police oversight for decades,
starting as a Deputy DA in Los Angeles in 1988. After working as a
criminal appellate defense attorney for 10 years, she took various
police oversight positions with the County of Los Angeles, LASD, and the
Los Angeles Public Defender before returning to the District Attorney's
office in January of 2021, one month after George Gascón took office.
In short, police “oversight” has been her life’s work going on decades now. A logical hire for George Gascón, who ran on such rhetoric as:
- “[… W]e have a national crisis of overmilitarized, unaccountable police forces.”
- “I am deeply troubled by the current state of law enforcement […]”
- Promising to “[e]stablish […] a registry of disreputable law enforcement officers.”
- Promising to “creat[e] a standardized process that facilitates the transfer of officers’ misconduct histories […].”
What is she accused of doing?
In
short, rather than “creating a standardized process” to build a
“registry of disreputable law enforcement officers,” Ms. Teran is
accused of using computer access she had while working at the LASD to
further Gascón's political goals of building that “registry of
disreputable law enforcement officers.” When it comes to confidential
personnel records at any employer, that is a big no-no. And when it
comes to police confidential personnel records, which are strictly
governed under special state laws for safety reasons, that is an extra
big no-no.
What did we know already?
Ms. Teran was accused
of 11 felony counts of Penal Code 502(c)(2), Accessing and Using
Computer Data Without Permission. The 11 counts, in total, carry a
maximum sentence of just under 10 years in prison. However, that is
reduced greatly under California prison release rules, not to mention
how a judge would actually sentence if she were convicted at trial.
Absolute worst-case scenario, she is probably looking at about a year in
custody in county jail, but it's more likely that she would receive a
probationary sentence with very little - or no - time in custody.
We
knew very little about the facts because, unlike in federal court,
California state prosecutors rarely spell out actual facts and evidence
in their filings. More typically, only the name of the crime with a date
of offense is stated, as is the case here.
We did know, however,
that Ms. Teran has already been accused of taking ethically questionable
actions in support of her boss. In the lead-up to the 2022 midterms,
Ms. Teran delayed making public a finding that an officer would not be charged with a crime
because it would help Mr. Gascón’s longtime political opponent Alex
Villanueva in his soon-to-be-held re-election bid, according to the
accusation. (Villanueva lost.)
Revelations about Ms. Teran’s Conduct
Given the explosive
revelations in the affidavit, Teran being charged with several felonies
is just the tip of the iceberg. Those eleven counts only refer to the
deputies whose personnel file was illegally used in the following
manner:
- There is a saved record in Sheriff Department auditing software of Ms. Teran accessing that deputy’s file.
- That
deputy’s record is one of the 33 names and records Ms. Teran sent to a
subordinate prosecutor (Deputy District Attorney Pamela Revel) in an
April 26, 2021 email serving as “tips for inclusion” in the
“disreputable” officer database.
- There was no findable public release or record of any kind in regards to that deputy as of April 26, 2021.
However,
Ms. Teran’s conduct was allegedly far broader than that. For example,
just because a public record existed somewhere in the public sphere in
regards to a particular deputy doesn't mean that's the record Ms. Teran
relied on in making her “tips” to subordinate prosecutors. In fact,
that's quite unlikely given that the affidavit states that of those 33
names “tipped” via email, “[m]ost of the documents were unsigned
tentative Superior Court decisions regarding civil service proceedings.”
This is notable because unsigned Superior Court decisions are never
public. Indeed, this is probably an unspoken message by the investigator
to the reviewing judge, who will be well aware that these are not
publicly available documents. Teran was not sending news articles; she
was sending court rulings in draft form that only she and a few others
had access to. In fact, the affidavit states that 10 of the documents
“appeared to have been scanned, copied, or directly taken from [Los
Angeles Sheriff Department] files.”
Second, the Attorney General
is proceeding only on those names that were sent in this one email to
one subordinate prosecutor (Revel) who was “incredulous and concerned”
over some of the contents in the email. But the affidavit makes clear
Ms. Teran was pushing many more names on her subordinates based on
knowledge she had gained through access to personnel files. Four other
Deputy DA's were interviewed in total, and none could account for how
Ms. Teran was getting the information she was giving them.
“[S]he would serially provide names of a deputy sheriff
along with a reason, i.e. conduct, and date for possible inclusion in
the [impeachment] databases (one or two at a time). [Head Deputy
District Attorney Brian] Shirn said that this was the first time that a
source for potential [impeachment] information was individual names
provided by a supervisor.”
Given that Teran had only
been in her position for several months at this time, but would go on
to serve for many more, the additional potential victims may number in
the dozens or hundreds.
This is all to say nothing of the arguable
interpretation of Penal Code section 502(c) that Ms. Teran, on these
facts, did not even have to attempt to place it in the database to
complete the crime. All the crime requires is taking or copying the data
without permission. Obviously in her oversight role with LA Sheriff,
she has permission to access data in the scope of her work. But taking
legally-protected personnel files with her to a new job is enough
illegality on its own to bring it outside of the permission she was
initially granted. Taking this expansive theory, her number of felony
counts could number in the hundreds if not thousands.
Granted, if
she gives a reasonable theory for why she took some of those files,
then that would be reasonable doubt right there. And that gets to what
was done here; this case was filed in way that prosecutors might term
“tight” or “conservative.” That is not a derogatory term; many or most
prosecutors consider that synonym for “responsible.” That prosecutors
used their discretion to charge the counts they can most easily secure
the end result they desire is nothing new. That often means charging
the easiest counts to prove, as is the case here. George Gascón’s
political opponent, Nathan Hochman, proved prescient when he tweeted back in April:
“AG
Rob Bonta, a huge Gascón supporter in 2020, would not have charged
Gascón’s No 3 in charge (Diana Teran) unless the evidence against her
was rock solid.”
Revelations About the Origins of the Investigation
The
affidavit also provides incredible details as to how the investigation
began. In short, Rob Bonta’s California Department of Justice was
forced to investigate the management of LADA’s law enforcement witness
database because one of George Gascón’s other lieutenants made it an
issue during an unrelated arrest of his own.
The chain of events
here is complicated. First, in December 2021, Gascón lieutenant Joseph
Iniguez (formal title Chief of Staff) was riding shotgun home from a
wedding in a car driven by his fiancé. His fiancé was pulled over, and
investigated for being DUI. Mr. Iniguez was so disruptive during the
investigation that he was also arrested. He threatened to use his
position to add the arresting officer to the database of “disreputable”
law enforcement officers. That threat triggered an investigation by the
California Department of Justice, which oversees such databases, into
whether Iniguez committed wrongdoing in regards to the database. Video
of the incident was also released last week:
That investigation,
according to the affidavit, “led to the conduct” of Ms. Teran. In other
words, one Gascón lieutenant’s alleged misuse of their position of
authority to undermine police was discovered because anothe Gascón
lieutenant allegedly used another position of authority to undermine a
police investigation into himself.
Where does it go from here?
Ms. Teran’s arraignment was scheduled for July 1 but has been postponed until July 17.
Progress is likely to be very slow in this type of case. Digital
forensic discovery in a case such as this will be voluminous and
difficult to navigate for a defense attorney. There will likely be
motions Teran's defense team will want to bring at multiple stages of
the prosecution. Furthermore, there is looming election of her boss,
George Gascón. He faces his first re-election fight in November, and
would presumably prefer this stays out of the headlines as much as
possible. A continuance beyond the November election would not be
abnormal for a case of this type even if it was not politically
convenient.
The only reasonably likely scenario I see where this gets resolved
before the election is if California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office
works out an early sweetheart deal with Ms. Teran. There are some
reasons to believe this could happen:
- She presumably has no criminal record.
- The crimes charged are not violent.
- She
will likely be lionized by the far left anyway for making mistakes in
the politically correct direction (anti-law enforcement). This is
already evidenced by the LA Times running their piece analyzing the affidavit with the headline, 'kind of bunk.' A cushy professor gig at some local law school would seem a likely landing spot, and indeed already has been for one of George Gascón’s departed defense attorney-turned advisors.
- George
Gascón’s policies of generously handing out diversion (i.e., keep your
nose clean for some length of time and we dismiss the case) work in her
favor. She has an argument: why should I be treated differently in LA
than other people just because the AG and not the DA is prosecuting me?
A diversion agreement could be a good way to get the bad headline out
of the way once and move on without opening up a can of worms. (See next
section.)
Is anyone else implicated?
What is still
unclear is whether the investigation is complete, or there are more
revelations to drop. Ms. Teran was alleged to have rather blatantly and
persistently, in front of multiple lawyers, ignore the rules for
handling sensitive police personnel records. How likely is it that
nobody else in power knew what she was doing? If they knew, did they
encourage it? Facilitate it? Did George Gascón hire her because he knew
she would do it? These are questions an investigator might be motivated
to get answers to, especially if evidence not spelled out in this
affidavit supports it.
Special Agent Tony Baca does write in the
affidavit: “I have not included each and every fact known to me
concerning this investigation.” While that is the case in any arrest
warrant, what is rare is that a reference to an “investigative criminal
grand jury” was dropped on Page 10. A very small percentage of cases
(well less than 1 percent) in Los Angeles come via grand jury. This
would be a case that is suitable for a grand jury, but the descriptor of
“investigative” may be a hint that the investigation is casting a wider
net than just Ms. Teran’s conduct. As a former Los Angeles County
Deputy District Attorney myself, I find that less likely than not,
overall, but not impossible.
