OAKLAND — A one-time spokeswoman for former District Attorney Pamela Price says county leaders are “playing games” and should be fined for withholding key text messages in her racial discrimination and wrongful termination lawsuit, court filings show.
Another person fired by Price claims the county’s attorneys are making a “mockery” of the judicial system for its “rampant stonewalling” in a different lawsuit, according to another filing in late November.
Taken together, Patti Lee and former Chief of Inspectors Craig Chew say Alameda County’s legal team has spent almost a year dodging demands by their attorneys for a wealth of documents, according to recent court filings. The delays are so egregious that some of their attorneys want a judge to impose sanctions — in Lee’s case, about $11,000 — on the county for all the extra time they’ve spent trying to wrangle the material, the filings said.
The county’s attorneys are “playing games and delaying the production of the information from the cell phone – each time making up a new excuse,” Lee’s attorneys wrote in the Nov. 25 filing. “This constant delay is not only unacceptable, but is gamesmanship and constitutes bad faith discovery abuse.”
Chew’s attorneys went further, claiming the county has “engaged in a systematic, ongoing, fundamental affront to the judicial system.” In a lawsuit filed in October 2024, Chew accused Price of harboring anti-Asian American views and firing him as a result.
“Alameda’s conduct, through counsel, is indefensible,” the attorney, Jon King, said in his filing. “It has made a mockery of this litigation and the judicial process.”
Messages sent Tuesday by this news outlet to Alameda County Counsel Donna Ziegler were not immediately returned. A call to Price also was not returned.
The complaints mirror some of the very accusations in Lee’s original lawsuit, which accused her former supervisor and other leaders within the district attorney’s office of not being forthcoming with reporters and even flouting public records laws.
Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price addresses media members during a press conference at the DA office in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, July 11, 20224. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)Lee was abruptly fired on Dec. 12, 2023, just two weeks after she said she was ordered to remove a journalist from a press conference, at the “specific behest” of Price. The move against The Berkeley Scanner’s Emilie Raguso drew wide condemnation from press advocates and free speech groups, and Price later reversed her stance.
Lee later sued Price and Alameda County, claiming the former district attorney openly spouted racist views, saw the media and Asian Americans as enemies and oversaw an office that disregarded open records laws. She also said Price and her staff wanted to “hide, delete, and change the records” being sought by journalists — including from the Bay Area News Group — after the controversial press conference, her lawsuit said.
Lee’s lawsuit specifically named Haaziq Madyun, the office’s communications director, as someone who was “not being forthcoming with the documents” and who “may have deleted or altered records” that were required to be released under state law. Like Lee, Madyun is a former TV news reporter.
The recent filing by Lee’s attorneys centered on texts contained on Madyun’s county-issued phone, which have yet to be handed over by the county.
Madyun suggested during his Oct. 29 deposition that he had no way to hand over the texts himself, because he had already given his phone to county staffers 10 months earlier. Lee’s attorneys also sought texts from Price, as well as a prosecutor in charge of handling the requests, Catherine Kobal, and others.
Without the messages, Lee’s attorneys could not complete depositions for Lee, Price and Madyun, her filing said. Other depositions, including for Kobal, have been delayed due to the dispute.
The county also has yet to hand over other texts, including from the county-issued phones belonging to Price and Royl Roberts, a former top lieutenant who briefly succeeded Price after her recall as acting district attorney.
On Tuesday, Roberts suggested that Alameda County should fork over the messages, though he also added that Price’s administration operated more on in-person conversations, rather than through text exchanges.
“As long as the requests are specific to the allegations in the complaint, I feel like the county should comply with the request,” said Roberts, who was deposed in the case a couple months ago. Of the lawsuit’s general allegations, he added that “while I was employed at the district attorney’s office, I did not observe any behavior that was consistent with the complaints in the allegation.”
Alameda County Interim District Attorney Royl Roberts during an interview at the D.A’s office in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, Dec. 9, 2024. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)Price was recalled from office by a nearly 2-to-1 margin during the November 2024 election, becoming the first district attorney in Alameda County’s history to be removed by voters. Yet she thrust herself back into the spotlight earlier this month by announcing she will run for the seat again next year, in the upcoming November 2026 election cycle.
Previous legal disputes involving Price’s cell phone records have proven contentious. In December 2024, an Alameda County Superior Court judge approved a subpoena for Price’s personal phone records to determine whether she used her office as a political cudgel by seeking extra prison time against a murder defendant in retaliation against his attorney.
Officials with the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office said they struggled to serve the subpoena amid Price’s constant absence from her home. As a result, they used a backup strategy that relied on Price’s mobile carrier, AT&T, for those same records.
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at [email protected].
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