The defendant here is Apple's head of global security, Thomas Moyer. There's an underlying legal dispute in the opinion about whether Mr. Moyer can potentially be found guilty for bribing the undersheriff of Santa Clara County with 200 iPads (worth $50,000-$80,000) in return for concealed carry permits on behalf of various Apple employees. The trial court thought he couldn't be found guilty, but the Court of Appeal hold otherwise, so reinstated the charge against him on the second count of the indictment.
Personally, I don't have a particularly powerful feeling as to whether Mr. Moyer is guilty of bribery, and Justice Bromberg's opinion in a couple of places similarly mentions that the evidence against him might not be especially strong (albeit sufficient for an indictment). Maybe he's guilty, maybe he's not. I'm fine to let a jury decide.
But it is my firm opinion that the relevant people in the Santa Clark County Sheriff's Office belong behind bars.
Here's the basic scoop:
"The Penal Code authorizes, but does not require, county sheriffs to issue licenses
to carry concealed weapons to applicants who are of good moral character, have good
cause for a license, reside or work in the county, and have completed a specified course
of training. [Cites] In the Santa
Clara County Sheriff’s Office, CCW applications are processed by the public information
officer, who is responsible for conducting background checks, arranging fingerprinting,
and ensuring that applicants complete the required trainings.
During the relevant time frame, the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office rarely
issued CCW licenses. Indeed, the office’s practice was to not even process an application
for a CCW license absent a special instruction to do so. Only Sheriff Laurie Smith and a
small number of others in the Sheriff’s Office had the authority to give such instructions.
One of those individuals was Rick Sung, who appears to have run Sheriff Smith’s 2018
re-election campaign and after the election became the undersheriff, second in command
to the sheriff. Undersheriff Sung also had authority to place license applications on hold
even after licenses were signed by the sheriff.
Undersheriff Sung abused his authority over CCW applications to extract favors.
In 2016 or 2017, Harpreet Chadha, a business owner, applied to renew a CCW license.
After the license was signed, Sung placed the license on hold and met with Chadha.
Afterwards, Chadha attempted to schedule an event for the sheriff in his company’s
luxury suite in the San Jose sports arena. The event did not take place then, and
Chadha’s CCW license remained on hold for more than a year until Sung spoke with
Chadha in December 2018 and a new permit was prepared. On February 14, 2019,
Chadha hosted an event for Sheriff Smith in his company’s luxury suite. That same day,
Chadha received his CCW license."
Similarly, when the folks at Apple wanted CCW licenses for their security people, they had to jump through the various (alleged) bribery hoops at the Sheriff's Office. The claim -- which seems darn strong to me -- is that (1) the CCW licenses languished forever, gathering dust, (2) until the folks at Apple made a $1000 campaign contribution to the Sheriff, (3) at which point the CCW licenses were approved but not issued, (4) and Apple was told that they'd never be issued if one particular employee at Apple who donated to the Sheriff's election opponent was getting one, (5) and the Sheriff's office would also be needing $50,000 worth of "free" iPads from Apple, to which Apple (at least initially) agreed.
My honest reaction: Scumbags. Times fifty since they're (allegedly) law enforcement officers.
I know that kind of (blatant) stuff goes on routinely in some other countries, even involving police officers.
Just didn't know it (allegedly) happened in my back yard as well.
