The chief of staff under several Oakland mayors, including former Mayor Sheng Thao, was the first witness called by the prosecution in the federal corruption trial of Thao, Andre Jones, David Duong, and Andy Duong.
Opening statements kicked off the trial of former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and three co-defendants Wednesday, and Thursday brought the first witnesses to the stand. As the Chronicle reports, that first witness for the prosecution was Leigh Hanson, who had a front-row seat to the alleged corruption and the relationships between Thao and Jones, and Thao and the Duongs.
Hanson already revealed some damning moments of Thao's tenure as mayor in her first bits of testimony, per the Chronicle. Those included a recounting of a 2023 trip to Vietnam that has become one of the main touchpoint in the corruption narrative — a trip Hanson said she warned Thao she should not be going on. Hanson reportedly testified that she told Thao it would be a pretty bad look for her in her first year as mayor to be out of the country if some public-safety emergency were to occur in the city.
What turned out to be the bad look, as the Chronicle reported from her testimony, was that Andy Duong took some of the male members of the delegation — which included officials from Oakland and San Leandro as well as the Port of Oakland — to be entertained by young, even possibly underage women. And the implication we understand from court filings from the FBI was that Duong may have even taken videos to use as potential leverage against the officials in the future.
Once the group was back in the states, a local journalist, Steve Tavares of the East Bay Insiders, magically caught wind of some details from the trip, including possible "sex trafficking of minors," and he made a call to Oakland City Hall to ask some questions.
Per the Chronicle, Hanson said that when she told Thao about the journalist sniffing around she replied, referring to Andy Duong, "I hate that fucking playboy. He’s always been trouble. He’s going to ruin my career."
As we learned in July, Duong allegedly had a video of former San Leandro City Councilmember Bryan Azevedo having a conversation in a car while on the Vietnam trip, "discussing sexual interactions from the previous evening." This may have been the thing that was leaked to Tavares, and according to prosecutors, very soon after, the Duongs offered to sponsor Tavares's newsletter to the tune of $2,000 per month — something the feds implied was in exchange for killing a story he was going to write about Azevedo.
As Oaklandside reports, Hanson said she went to work for Thao believing that she was "values driven" and was "very accomplished," but soon she began questioning some of her choices — in particular the choice to involve her romantic partner Andre Jones in city business, even though he had no role at City Hall.
As NBC Bay Area reports, Hanson said she was surprised to see Jones on a Zoom call in which city officials were interviewing a candidate for an important role at City Hall, given his lack of a role himself. And when she later questioned Jones's presence at a meeting to discuss the removal of then-Chief of Police LeRonne Armstrong — Thao placed Armstrong on administrative leave amid an internal affairs scandal in January 2023 — she testified that Jones came back at her with a thinly veiled threat.
Hanson says that she warned Thao that if Armstrong were to ever sue the city over his firing, the presence of a non-employee of the city at such a high level meeting could become a legal issue.
Later, she said, Jones said to her, "We'll see which one is left at the end of the day."
Hanson would go on to serve as chief of staff under the interim mayors who came into the job after Thao was recalled in November 2024. The homes of Thao and Jones as well as the homes and offices of the Duongs were raided by federal agents five months earlier, and she would ultimately be indicted, along with Jones and the Duongs, in January 2025.
As the Chronicle notes, Hanson was fired by City Council President Kevin Jenkins, who became interim mayor for five months last year, and Hanson now has a lawsuit against the city claiming wrongful termination.
The individual defenses of the codefendants point to one clear point, via the opening statements recounted by the Chronicle. Attorneys for both Andre Jones and David Duong are going to argue that their clients were not involved in any bribery scheme — pointing the finger squarely at Thao and Andy Duong.
Jones's attorney, Mark Goldrosen, is also going to be presenting evidence that what the prosecution has painted a no-show job given to Jones at the Duongs' startup, Evolutionary Homes, was indeed a real job that he showed up for.
Per the Chronicle, Thao's attorney, Jeffrey Tsai, told the court Wednesday that Thao and Jones had a strained relationship during the period in question, 2023-2024, and he implied the two are no longer together. He appeared to be setting up an argument that the alleged bribe, in the form of the $95,000 paid to Jones for said job, couldn't have been part of a bribery conspiracy involving the mayor because Jones spent the money on himself — and Thao and Jones reportedly exchanged heated texts, sometimes while in different rooms of the same house, which are going to be shown in court.
Previously: Jury Selection Begins In Federal Corruption Trial of Former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, Others
