Mayor Daniel Lurie’s office has violated California public-records law by refusing to release information about the mayor’s October call with President Donald Trump, a committee of city public-records commissioners ruled on Tuesday. The pivotal conversation between the two men preceded the president cancelling a planned “surge” of immigration agents to the Bay Area.
A three-person committee of the city’s Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, the body that monitors city officials’ compliance with public-records laws, said Tuesday that Lurie’s office had broken the California Public Records Act by claiming records related to the Oct. 22 call, including any logs, transcripts, and notes, are exempt under “attorney-client privilege.”
While it was possible that some records related to the call were exempt, the committee concluded, it was unlikely that all of them were.
The committee ruled unanimously that the mayor’s office applied “inappropriate standards for withholding privileged documents,” said Dean Schmidt, an attorney and chair of the committee. It recommended that the full task force take up the issue and order Lurie to “produce all non-privileged documents” related to the phone call.
Lurie’s office denies it violated the law and says the city attorney’s office has weighed in and cleared the exemption.
Lurie and Trump spoke on the phone the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 22, after a coterie of billionaires reportedly facilitated a detente when Trump promised a Bay Area-wide immigration enforcement blitz.
Though the content of the call was widely reported, the sources of information for that reporting have been people within the mayor’s office. Supervisor Jackie Fielder and others have publicly expressed concern that not everything discussed between Lurie and Trump has been disclosed.
Lurie has said no deals were struck with the White House. But it remains unclear why San Francisco has been the only city to get a reprieve after a Trump order to send in immigration agents and the National Guard.
The committee’s ruling came in response to a complaint lodged against Lurie on Oct. 29 by Hazel Williams, a community organizer and frequent filer of public-records requests.
Five days before filing the complaint and just two days after Lurie’s call, Williams had asked for “all records related to the mayor’s phone call with the President this week and the decision to call off the federal deployment to San Francisco.”
Williams’ public-records request was broad. It sought “phone-call records” like audio recordings and transcripts, emails, text messages, “records of the planned federal deployment,” “documentation of the decision to call off the deployment,” and “any agreements or understanding” related to the call.
Under California law, communiques like those between Lurie and Trump are generally considered public records. They can be obtained by anyone seeking them.
But Lurie’s office fought Williams’ request. It claimed on Oct. 29 that the records sought were protected from disclosure under attorney-client privilege because city lawyers were “included” in the documents.
“Attorneys from the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office are on documents that could be responsive to your request, but the Office of the Mayor is withholding them because of attorney-client privilege,” wrote Dexter Darmali, a legislative and ethics secretary for Lurie.
Several First Amendment experts were skeptical of Lurie’s reasoning. California law only exempts records involving attorneys from disclosure if they involve confidential communication, disciplinary proceedings, and certain kinds of work-product. It is unclear how city attorneys were involved in the records and whether the claimed exemption would pass legal muster.
“I’ve dealt with some pretty bogus assertions of attorney-client privilege in my long career,” said Karl Olson, a longtime public records attorney. “I just really don’t see any basis for claiming attorney-client privilege.”
“If there are any communications between the mayor’s office and any one else in the federal government, that is not attorney-client privilege,” added David Loy, an attorney and the legal director of the First Amendment Coalition.
Attorney-client privilege is a very narrow exemption under the California Public Records Act, the experts said. For example: if Lurie sought legal advice from a city attorney before or after the call, that would be considered confidential. Any other call records, including who was present for the phone call and what was said or promised, should be public, they said.
The call between Lurie and Trump, Olson said, was a “matter of great public importance, and the Public Records Act has to be construed broadly, and exemptions have to be construed narrowly.” The mayor’s assertion of secrecy, he continued, appeared to be a “knee-jerk attempt” to keep potentially “sensitive” information private.
Documents related to the call are public even if “an attorney [was] listening in on the call,” Loy said. “It has to be a confidential communication between an attorney and client,” he said, for the document to be exempt.
Williams used a similar argument in an email exchange with a mayoral staffer seven minutes after being told their request was denied. “The request is for records between the Mayor and the President. That relationship does not constitute an attorney-client relationship,” Williams wrote to Darmali. “The president is not the mayor’s attorney. The mayor is not the president’s attorney.”
Williams then launched a formal complaint with the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. The city attorney’s office has “determined that the Mayor’s office did not improperly withhold records,” mayoral staffer Darmali wrote.
The Sunshine committee disagreed. It now goes to the task force’s 10 voting members. If they vote in support of Williams, the matter could be brought before the ethics commission, though that body’s power is limited.
It’s not the first time the group, which is composed of different First Amendment and press freedom experts, has censured a sitting mayor.
Last year, the Sunshine Task Force ruled unanimously that Mayor London Breed and City Attorney David Chiu violated state and local law by deleting text messages that dealt with city business. That practice was also uncovered after Williams filed a complaint.
So far, Breed and Chiu appear to have eluded consequences for that alleged rule-breaking. It remains to be seen if the same will be true for Lurie.
It appears Lurie has learned well from Trump, but the phrase “attorney-client privilege” does not constitute magic, self-proving words. What Lurie really seems to be saying to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force is, “Make me.” Very Trumpian indeed.
Lurie is complicit😢
Welcome to the new SF: Local Oligarchs complicit with the new feudal corporate theocracy and Ethnic Nationalism….
The real question is why is he claiming that privilege and what he’s trying to hide. It’s one thing if he just doesn’t want to discuss it but he’s invoking a legal precept to avoid the issue and it completely doesn’t apply. This kind of stuff is Breed-esque garbage that we voted out. Lurie is really making me scratch my head lately with these bizarre fails and shady vibes. Who did we elect?
A neophyte mommy’s boy with no agenda, no skills, and no real constituency outside of his fellow oligarchs.
Who needs it? The NYT told the story two months ago. It wasnt Lurie, it was Thiel, Sacks, Benioff, etc. the guys who run San Francisco. The question is not what Lurie offered Trump, but why the tech moguls, who had been pissing in their pants over the progressive homeless drug-addicted mentally ill dystopia (remember, Musk wanted to jail some judges). Suddenly that all changed when Lurie took over, ramping up the SFPD, adding Flock and drones in the mix even tho crime in the city is way down from 2019. The billionaires run this city now and they told Trump to get out of their way. Like the good little syncophant he is, he obeyed. The “phone call” was nothing but window dressing. The question is why they didnt want extra protection, and security for their rightly paranoid sci- fi fantasies
They’re eating the dogs!
This is easy to speculate what Lurie and Trump agreed upon if you follow the DOJ news releases;
“Since early October, the FBI has coordinated with SFPD and our other local, state, and federal law enforcement partners to intensify our efforts targeting narcotics activity in and around San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. These collaborative efforts have resulted in a significant number of arrests and major seizures of illegal drugs,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Sanjay Virmani. “San Francisco residents deserve safe streets, free from deadly drugs. We are united, we are persistent, and we are committed to keeping our neighborhoods safe.”
Lurie dealt with “the problem”; rather than having the National Guard patrol and arrest drug users, the SFPD and the DEA joined forces and just arrested the drug dealers who weren’t even based in the city itself.
Lock em up
Sometime leaders need to be able to have frank, candid discussions with one another in private to do the work we have elected them to do. Lurie averted a major crisis as far as I am concerned. Disclosure of the call contents would only rile people up and poke the the big orange bear. Journalists would have a great time selling it, politicians like GGN would have a great time riding it, but the little guy would get totally screwed. The responsible and wise decision is to let this one go.
My goodness listen to all these bootlickers trying to argue that politicians are entitled to making secret backroom deals.
Mayor Lurie, with the help of his friends in Silicon Valley, avoided what only can be called an invasion of SF by the National Guard and armed/masked federal ICE agents. What happened in Los Angeles and Oakland was on its way to our beautiful city. Yes, he used his power and influence to have Trump call off the illegal round up that would have affected thousands of people and their families (legal immigrants, Hispanic USCs and the undocumented.) Did he use his power and connections to pull that off? He sure did but it was for the right cause. If he had not, people would have been detained in horrendous conditions without due process. The Sunshine Task Force should back off and consider that what Lurie did in avoiding a true city wide crisis, was so consequential to the city that it deserves giving him the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t sell the city down the river under a quid pro quo. If the WH believes that it can not speak freely, then Trump won’t be taking future calls from the mayor or his Silicon Valley buddies in the future. Is the Task Force benefiting San Franciscans and its residents by trying to catch Lurie in a gotcha moment? Aren’t there bigger fish to go after?
Did he though? We have a right to know the facts and he hid them.
WHY? WE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW.
“While it was possible that some records related to the call were exempt, the committee concluded, it was unlikely that all of them were. ”
Since the committee does not know the content of the communications, then it cannot credibly claim to know that it is “unlikely” that it was all exempt.
More likely it was a condition of the call that it be kept confidential, no doubt citing national security risks, which trumps anything the state might opine about.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this. It is necessary and in the public interest that leaders be able to have private conversations to speak directly and frankly, to cut though BS . I cannot imagine how we’d expect any mayor to have an effective discussion with Trump if both knew the transcript would be public. This just seems like a barrier to effective governance masquerading as “good government”.
Law enforcement, potentially, comes to SF: invasion!
Roughly 20 million people illegally and unvetted cross into the country illegally: …..
But white folks who come illegally are not vetted and are allowed to stay. So many here in SF too. Double standard, eh?
For goodness’ sake, why make such a big deal about it? If Lurie got done what probably both sides of the issue wanted, who cares? Williams and all the others sound like a garden variety troublemakers, willing to cut off the city’s nose to spite its face. Does it not occur to anyone that maybe Lurie got done what he did precisely BECAUSE the contents of the conversation were private? Isn’t this exactly how some things get done, maybe the ONLY way they are resolved? We don’t need busybodies obsessively pointing to some minor points in a rule book. Or maybe it’s people with serious TDS infections who are willing to fight to the death to block anything that could be said to be a “win” for Trump. GET OVER IT!
BECAUSE ITS AGAINST THE EFFING LAW, HOW ABOUT THAT?
And Oligarchs should not be exempt…