David Alexander

Day 7 Becker Perjury Trial: Civil Grand Jury Overseer Testifies

Four witnesses for the prosecution testified Monday in the perjury trial of Santa Clara Vice Mayor Anthony Becker.

The first witness was the director of a public relations firm the 49ers used during the time of the civil grand jury report leak. The second was the designer who set up the website GrandJuryReport-dot-com, a site that also published the report prior to its release. The third was the county employee who oversaw the civil grand jury. The final witness was a data extraction expert for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.

The first witness, Anne Moriarity, communication director at Milltown Partners, testified that her team strategized in the wake of getting their hands on the report. She said she got the report from Rahul Chandok, the 49ers communications director at the time, who told her, “Don’t ask where I got it.”

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Knowing that it would be public in a few days, Moriarity told the court that her team’s job was to “undermine the credibility” of the report. Similar to another media relations person working for the 49ers, Elena Caple, she said the report was riddled with “factual inaccuracies.”

“I don’t recall the goal being to have the report not published,” Moriarity said. “I believe the plan was to give [San Jose Spotlight editor Ramona Giwargis] the report and share the 49ers message.”

Next, Jason Salinas, a designer who took money from the Santa Clara Police Officers Association (POA) to set up a site that also featured the leaked report, took the stand.

He testified that he purchased the domain for the site GrandJuryReport-dot-com three days before the county released the report, two hours prior to the report’s publication in San Jose Spotlight.

Salinas said he downloaded the report from San Jose Spotlight.

Britney Huelbig, deputy manager for Santa Clara County Superior Court, oversaw the 2022 grand jury that produced the leaked report “Unsportsmanlike Conduct.”

While she assists civil grand juries with operations — things such as training, logistics, acclimating to work space, payroll and getting badges — she said she does not sit with them during their deliberations and investigations.

Handing off the draft report to the city was at issue. Santa Clara City Clerk Hosam Haggag did not confirm receipt of the draft report, Huelbig said. This caused her to follow up by calling the city clerk’s office.

Christopher Montoya, Becker’s public defender, inquired what she learned during a phone conversation with Nora Pimentel, the assistant city clerk.

“I recall that I was informed that Mr. Haggag did not maintain business hours,” she said.

Pimentel told her it would be “more in line with their office policy” to send her the documents, which Huelbig said she did.

Montoya tried to establish that the report’s release was atypical, which would bolster the defense’s suspicion that the grand jury was biased against Becker. However, Montoya could hardly get a question out during Huelbig’s testimony without an avalanche of objections.

Earlier in the proceedings, Montoya expressed frustration with the prosecution’s tactic of objecting to seemingly every line of questioning and submitted evidence.

“What the People are trying to do is not allow the defense to have a defense at all,” Montoya said.

Further, Montoya detailed subsequent emails between Huelbig and Chandok. In those emails, Chandok expressed concern over the report’s contents, but Huelbig assured him the report was a draft and that the purpose of the period between the draft report and the final report was to address errors.

Recounting a follow up phone call between Huelbig and Chandok, Montoya claimed Chandok was making an “excited utterance,” characterizing him as “frantic,” therefore exempting the talk between him and Huelbig from the hearsay rule.

However, Judge Javier Alcala was having none of it, barring Huelbig from commenting on Chandok’s mental state during the call. She simply said she recalled that the conversation was not “light-hearted,” adding that Chandok was “concerned about what [she] was going to do about [the report being leaked].”

Amid a sea of objections from the prosecution throughout his cross-examinations, Montoya retreated into eliciting testimony from each witness that they had no knowledge that Becker leaked the report.

Finally, the court deemed an investigator for the district attorney’s office an expert witness.

Tanya Neu took the stand and detailed her qualifications as a data-extraction expert. Although the defense objected — citing her lack of college degrees, peer-reviewed articles and appearance on expert panels or as a speaker at relevant conferences — Alcala ruled her an expert.

Three times previously, once for the public defender’s office, Neu has testified as an expert witness. This designation means she can give expert opinions in her field. The court will hear her testimony Tuesday morning.

Day 7 Becker Perjury Trial: Civil Grand Jury Overseer Testifies

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