Councilman Anthony Becker has been set up to go down. Mayor Lisa Gillmor wants him off the council and in jail. What is the crime he committed? He ran against Gillmor for mayor in November and came within one percent of winning. Almost immediately Becker’s life became a living hell.
The infamous grand jury report that was released in October conveniently criticized the “49er five,” which included Becker. Now, you wouldn’t really suspect this biased document was designed to be released just before the elections, would you? Absolutely it was, and it appeared to channel Gillmor’s playbook. The report disparaged the five council members Santa Clara residents elected to replace Gillmor’s misguided majority.
Just imagine for a moment how these five were criticized for meeting and planning with Santa Clara’s major mega-million-dollar business partner, the SF 49ers.
Conversely, we could not find even one meeting between Mayor Gillmor and the 49ers in the past four years.
As biased as the civil grand jury report was against Becker and the council majority, it was treated by Gillmor and District Attorney Jeff Rosen as the Bible of politics in Santa Clara.
Rosen has now indicted Anthony Becker for, of all things, lying about releasing the grand jury report early. Sorry Mr. Rosen, but you are mistaken.
The civil grand jury report was sent to a variety of individuals and organizations early. The SF Chronicle had a full article online and in print the next morning, as did the SJ Spotlight, the Mercury News and The Weekly. The only known council person who has a relationship with the SF Chronicle is Mayor Lisa Gillmor. In addition, the Santa Clara POA had a website purchased and named the Grand-Jury-Report-dot-com the next morning. The relationship between the POA and Mayor Gillmor is hand and glove.
Most important, we know this report was in circulation to a variety of media outlets before it was made public.
Unbelievable that Councilman Anthony Becker was singled out as a “lying leaker” when the report was already in the hands of the media. Yet, after detailing to the criminal grand jury how Council Member Kathy Watanabe gave the report to her husband to read and Gillmor emailed it to her personal email account, Deputy District Attorney Jason Malinsky told the criminal grand jury that no one else would be investigated or charged with leaking the document.
However, based on Becker’s statement that he did not leak the report, District Attorney Jeff Rosen went ballistic. Rosen accused Becker of lying and assumed guilt. He sent his troops to Becker’s home, not just once, but twice. They treated him like a drug dealer, showing up with weapons, ransacking his home with a search and seizure, taking his computer, his phone and leaving his home in total chaos.
Do you think there is a possible political relationship between District Attorney Jeff Rosen and Santa Clara Mayor, Lisa Gillmor?
View Comments (8)
I think that we would all prefer for Rosen and his grand juries to focus on: (a) the shoplifters who are ransacking our stores and driving them out of business; (b) the dope addicts/dealers who are taking over downtown San Jose; and (c) all of the waste, fraud, and abuse in our local governments; RATHER THAN persecuting our duly elected representatives with novel secretive accusations that are intentionally or unintentionally distracting our City Council from more fully focusing on: (1) reducing our City's bloated public payroll and other expenditures; (2) working effectively with our contractual stadium partners to optimize the benefits of the stadium for our city; and (3) optimizing the housing stock in our city by reducing development fees, delays, and unnecessary rules so that the residents of our city can live in decent housing units (not high rise ant colonies).
Well said, John.
Miles,
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You appear to be confused on some facts or perhaps you are simply trying to foist a lie upon your readers.
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The Chronicle did not have a full article online at three AM. Your publication did. Under Erika Towne's byline. Councilperson Suds Jain reportedly testified to the grand jury that councilperson Anthony Becker disclosed to him that he illegally leaked the grand jury report to Carolyn Schuk the editor of your publication.
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And Anthony Becker reportedly denied that he did this under oath in previous testimony. This is why he has been indicted for perjury.
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How is it that you as the publisher are unaware that your associate editor received the leaked grand jury report from Anthony Becker according to Suds Jain in sworn testimony?
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Are you also unaware that Forty Niners executives testified that Carolyn Schuk had conversations with them to discuss assisting them in spinning the grand jury report to minimize public relations damage to them and to try to diffuse the impact that Lisa Gillmor surely hoped it would make?
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I would not be shocked if Rosen has a political relationship with Gillmor but given that Gillmor is termed out after this term I do not see why he should care to be doing big favors to her. More likely is that he like any district attorney wants to make headlines about cracking down on local corruption such as the illegal use of public office by a city councilperson to leak a grand jury report prematurely to a corporate special interest that was investigated by the grand jury.
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I not only would not be shocked but know as a fact that you and your publication have a political relationship with Anthony Becker and at least a political relationship with the Forty Niners. This is evident from your incessant cheerleading for the Forty Niners figuratively and literally. It is also evident from sworn testimony by Suds Jain and Forty Niners employees and we shall see what physical evidence also makes your political relationships with Becker and the Forty Niners evident.
Buchser Alum,
1. Carolyn Schuk is not the editor of this publication, I am. I am responsible for all editorial content.
2. You are correct that our story on the Preliminary Grand Jury report went up on October 7, 2022 at 3 am. You might find this quote from the District Attorney’s Transcript interesting:
“While the [Chronicle] article currently shows a time of 6:36 p.m. online, the “Way Back Machine” showed the initial 8:58 a.m. time.” “ But if you pulled up the actual image of the first screenshot, it did have the original publish date and time as October 7th at 058 hours.”
That would make the time of the initial release to be 2 hours and 2 minutes before The Weekly.
We will correct Milestones to state these facts.
Angie,
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My apologies I should have written "an" editor as opposed to "the" editor. As I'm sure you read I later specified that she is associate editor so I trust you know I was not trying to diminish your position or overstate Carolyn's and you are just being especially punctilious in making sure everyone who might be reading knows you are THE editor.
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The quote from the report is interesting but does nothing to further your implication. Having an article published on the grand jury report does not equate to having received a leaked copy. Their earliest articles were tiny little mentions of the story developing with no detail. They fleshed out their article throughout the day and did not write from perspective of having. The report until after another publication made it available for download.
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Nice try joining Miles in trying to deflect from your serving as the mouthpiece for Becker and the Forty Niners in a way that was matched only by San Jose Spotlight hours later.
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Miles will not mention that Becker leaked to Schuk at all and that makes it clear how in the bag he is for Becker and the Forty Niners. And you have show your true stripes by trying to pretend a little atub of an article lacking detail is equivalent to a pages long article that could only be written after spending hours poring over the full report and discussing what talking points would best serve Becker and Hardy and Jain and Chahal and Park and the Forty Niners.
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Nice try Angie but not cigar. I was watching this all in real time and you cannot gaslight me.
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Your publication was the first to write about the report in a detailed way that was obviously enabled by being leaked the full report. And we know this as a fact due to Suds Jain's sworn testimony though it was obvious long before. I said so many times before Jain's testimony was made and revealed.
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The second publication to write with firsthand knowledge was San Jose Spotlight. Ramona Giwargis wrote it and also made the report available for download. We all know that Giwargis and Gillmor have had an adversarial relationship for years and that Giwargis and the Spotlight have been doing their best to promote Becker and denigrate Gillmor. I am sure before all is said and done, Becker or Giwargis will end up testifying that Becker leaked the report to Giwargis like he leaked it to your associate editor Carolyn Schuk.
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It was not until well after the Spotlight article with downloadable report was published that the Mercury and Chronicle later updated their articles with detail. I know this because I was tracking this in real time and anyone can see my and others' comments on this site and santaclaranews and San Jose Spotlight discussing in real time how curious it was that Silicon Valley Voice was first to publish and Spotlight second. And the big newspapers scooped by you two. Well not really scooped per se more like they were not mouthpieces for Becker and his allies like you and Spotlight.
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Go back and read all those comments. I asked Erica how she was able to break the story and write with so much detail. She never answered and nor did you or anyone else.
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Because you knew the whole time that Anthony Becker had illegally leaked it to Carolyn Schuk. You knew all this time that Becker had feloniously perjured himself I am sure. And of course you knew that Carolyn at least had also been coordinating directly with the Forty Niners to enhance their public relations efforts.
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You are THE editor after all and I assume you are not as confused and out of touch as Miles might be.
Angie,
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I am glad to see that you removed your publisher Miles's false assertions about specific times.
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But I see that you have retained his deceptive attempt at fooling your readers with this statement: "The SF Chronicle had a full article online and in print the next morning."
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The Chronicle did not have a "full" article printed online much less in print until after the San Jose Spotlight printed their full article and made the entire grand jury report available for download. Nor did the Mercury news.
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The facts are very clear: Anthony Becker leaked the report to the Forty Niners and also to Carolyn Schuk of the Santa Clara Weekly/Silicon Valley Voice and probably Ramona Giwargis of the San Jose Spotlight. He was questioned about this under oath by the grand jury and was so hubristic and foolish that he committed a felony by lying and perjuring himself. Former and current Forty Niners employees testified to this as did Suds Jain and there was testimony about how your Silicon Valley Voice's associate editor Carolyn Schuk also had direct communication with the Forty Niners about helping to make them look better despite what was reported by the grand jury.
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Anyone paying attention has seen not only Miles literally being a Forty Niners cheerleader but also your entire staff and publication carrying water for the Forty Niners and Anthony Becker and his allies on the council.
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When it comes to these political matters you and your publication are not a newspaper and you do not do reporting. You do political spin. You publish propaganda and the talking points of one side of a political rivalry. You are not alone in this but it is important that your readers understand that there are certain pieces published here that are heavily biased and have an agenda.
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Which Miles would like to distract everyone from realizing by foisting the deceptive lie that publications beyond the Silicon Valley Voice and the San Jose Spotlight were leaked the grand jury report. Distract us all away from the fact that your publication and its staff are not always journalists reporting news stories. You are often political actors.
I see "whinny" is stall at it.
Breaking news
We now know that Buchser Alum is a legal eagle expert
So my riddle from before was who can it be, who can Buchser Alum be? All signs are pointing more and more to the disgraced "genius" former City Attorney Brian Doyle.
The next riddle is should a Vegas bet be made that Doyle and Santana were behind the Grand jury Report with Gillmor cause In there they praise Doyle and Santana who essentially ruined Santa Clara.
Why can't the people of this great state and city read all the transcripts of who got the grand jury report going we know for sure two councilmembers admitted they were interviewed before the report that was Jain and Hardy, so who were the others? Gillmor? Watanabe? Doyle ? Santana?
Seems like Buchser Alum aka Brian Doyle, Lisa Gillmor etc want to keep the lie going rather than the truth come out. Remember they lost the city millions by lying about settlement agreements and district elections.
Bonus riddle for 1,000 points
How do you know Mayor Gillmor is lying?
answer: Everytime she opens her mouth. Her tell tale sign, watch the hands. People are watching and know the truth.