Sure he might not live in San Francisco. And then there’s the sticky FBI probe into what — according to what Jew and a company employee told the San Francisco Chronicle — sounds a lot like a tapioca tea shakedown scheme. But before you assume that San Francisco Supervisor Ed Jew doesn’t play by the rules, we at Legal Pad would like to direct you to a document that Jew’s lawyer, Steven Gruel, filed with the city today.
Jew told the Chronicle that he recommended that owners of the Quickly tea shop work with political consultant Robert Chan to solve their permit problems (though a city staffer told the Chronicle that it was Jew himself who brought the potential permit issues to the attention of city staff). Then, in the first week of May, Quickly’s owners gave Jew $40,000 in what now seems to have been an FBI sting operation, since the agents who raided Jew’s office had serial numbers for the bills they were seeking.
Jew claims he was going to give the money to Chan, and ask the consultant to donate $20,000 for a city playground. And on Monday, he filed papers to that effect. In a letter (.pdf) attached to the filing, Gruel writes that “Robert Chan donated $10,000 from the owners of Quickly tapioca drink shops to the Friends of Sunset Playground on June 1, 2007 at Supervisor Jew’s request.” (State law, Gruel said Tuesday, gives a politician 30 days to disclose a contribution made at his or her behest, adding that “from what I’ve heard, the supervisor came into contact with these funds on May 4. He had until June 4 to report it.”)
But what of the other $10,000? Gruel writes that it was “seized on May 18, 2007 by the Federal Bureau of Investigations and remains in its possession. When the federal matter is resolved and the funds are returned, they will be donated accordingly.”
— Justin Scheck
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