A judge has reportedly reversed a ruling on several motions in the perjury trial of Santa Clara City Council Member Anthony Becker after defense argued that Mayor Lisa Gillmor’s credibility is suspect.
While Judge Julie Emede did not allow access to Gillmor’s communications with the Civil Grand Jury, a motion filed by the defense on Aug. 9 did sway Judge Emede to release other documents involving Mayor Gillmor and her connection to the Civil Grand Jury.
In the motion, Becker’s defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender Chris Montoya, argued that Gillmor’s deceptive tactics have made her untrustworthy.
The issue stems from a Public Records Act (PRA) request submitted by Council Member Suds Jain in July. It asked for text and social media messages sent by Gillmor from the dais at the May 28 and June 4, 2024 City Council meetings.
Gillmor submitted, among other documents, two computer screenshots of “Irreconcilable Differences,” the Civil Grand Jury report that investigated Santa Clara City Council members for uncouth behavior. As of June 4, 2024, the date listed in the PRA, the Civil Grand Jury report had not been released, even in draft form.
Jain immediately submitted a new PRA asking for dates of when the photos were taken and who Gillmor was communicating with. He said the date of his original PRA was one day before the draft of “Irreconcilable Differences” was released and seven days before the release of the final report.
“It seems Mayor Gillmor became uncooperative,” said Jain in a letter to the Santa Clara Civil Grand Jury presiding Judge Beth McGowen on July 22, 2024 when his second request went unanswered.
The letter urged the court to investigate whether Gillmor received an early copy of “Irreconcilable Differences” and if she was sending the images to someone else.
Montoya used the PRA and Gillmor’s response to argue that Gillmor’s communications with the Civil Grand Jury should be made available to the defense.
He said Gillmor might have “personal and political” connections with members of the Civil Grand Jury that would allow her to see a report early.
County Counsel Aryn Harris called it a fishing expedition. She told the judge that Gillmor’s lawyer, Rob Mezzetti, had provided metadata that proved the photo was taken after the report was released. She said since the images did not have a “Draft” watermark, they had to be of the final report.
Judge Julie Emede agreed that communication with the Civil Grand Jury is protected. She said the defense had not provided enough proof to override that protection.
Judge Emede told Harris to provide proof that the images were of the final draft, including the final report’s metadata.
Harris filed testimony from Britney Huelbig, the person responsible for “formatting” the 2023-24 Civil Grand Jury reports. Huelbig stated that the image was “… consistent with the final Civil Grand Jury report that was finalized on June 12, 2024.”
However, Harris did not provide metadata.
In his Aug. 9 motion, Montoya wrote that the declaration “… falls well short of what was represented to the Court.”
He said the lack of metadata and Huelbig’s testimony “… [do] little to exclude the possibility that Mayor Gillmor improperly obtained a copy of a Grand Jury report drafted on or before June 4, 2024.”
Montoya said either Gillmor was complying with the PRA and she had early access to the report or she submitted the photo to “mock or insult the PRA requester.” If it was the latter, Montoya argued that Gillmor was doing the very thing the “Irreconcilable Differences” report accused council members of doing, mocking the system and wasting employee time.
He pointed out that if this was a way to “mock” the PRA requester, then Gillmor had also wasted the county and court’s time and money.
“And though Mayor Gillmor has known about this issue for weeks, she refused to correct the record until yesterday [Aug. 8],” wrote Montoya. “If her lawyer’s representations as the defense understands them to be, Mayor Gillmor’s actions show that she is not credible, any metadata information she may submit to this Court regarding the screenshots cannot be relied upon.”
Becker’s trial for perjury was supposed to start on Aug. 14, but Judge Panteha E. Saban sent the case back to the scheduling court for reassignment due to a scheduling conflict.
The scheduling hearing will take place on Sept. 9.
View Comments (2)
I found it a little bit difficult to follow what is being alleged here but I think that the allegation is that Lisa Gillmor was issued a PRA request for messages she sent from the dais during a couple city council meetings.
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She responded with some documents and amongst them were two screenshots of what appears to be the cover page of the final grand jury report that was made public after the time period of the PRA request.
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If this is true then Gillmor included these screenshots in the PRA request either accidentally or on purpose. And if she did it on purpose then it appears that she did so to thumb her nose at the PRA requestor who was Suds Jain.
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If this is all true then I agree that this was improper and childish behavior. If true then it reflects poorly upon Gillmor though it is also a very trivial issue not deserving any more attention than some other trivial matters that garner politicized attention such as the allegation that Kevin Park attended a library fundraiser dinner without paying for tickets and then paid in arrears. That was a nothingburger and this has all appearances of also being a nothingburger.
wkmuko1@gmail.com
To me, this is just the tip of the iceberg in what Mayor Gilmor did behind the scenes. We need to know who on the Grand Jury was connected to her and how the Grand Jury was picked. Obviously, they were biased in their findings without making a single investigation inquiries to the other City Council Members, very poor. Her connections with the Police Chief and the County District Attorney, Rosen are longstanding. Let's look further into this.