Written by by Thomas Buckley at californiaglobe.com
The past few weeks have not been good for Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon.
One of his top deputies, Assistant District Attorney Diana Teran, was arrested and charged with 11 felonies by the state Attorney General’s Office and he was accused of dropping charges against an election information vendor for political reasons, leading yet another current deputy district attorney to file retaliation-related paperwork against him.
Teran is alleged to have improperly accessed the sheriff’s departments personnel records and then used said information illegally. All of the counts bear the same April, 2021 date – when she was an employee of the DA’s office, but Teran reportedly obtained the private information involving between 11 and 23 deputies – including future Sheriff Alex Villanueva – in 2018 when she was a “Constitutional Policing Advisor” at the sheriff’s department.
Saturday, Teran was booked into Los Angeles County jail and – as far as the Globe can tell – remains there in lieu of $50,000 bail.
Teran’s attorney, Jame Spertus, has stated categorically and unequivocally that Teran is not only innocent of the allegations, the work she was doing was literally part of her job description, something Attorney General Rob Bonta apparently misunderstood when filing the charges.
The other bad news for Gascon occurred on the 17th, when Deputy District Attorney Eric Neff filed a claim against Gascon (claims must be filed before actual lawsuits begin.)
According to the claim, Neff – as part of his work with the office’s Public Integrity Division, obtained information in 2022 that a company called Konnech – owned by a Mr. Eugene Yu – may have been routing and/or sending “personally identifying information” on election workers to and/or through China, a blatant violation of the nearly $3 million dollar contract it had with the county Registrar of Voters.