AG Bonta Influencing Alameda County Board DA Replacement Following Recall Election

California Attorney General Rob Bonta is pushing the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to choose his chief deputy Venus Johnson as the replacement for recalled DA Pamela Price, the Globe has been learned.

“CA AG Rob Bonta is pushing his incompetent chief deputy Venus Johnson for Oakland DA. She is former director of Oakland’s Department of Public Safety, former legal and policy advisor to Kamala Harris when she was AG, and former chief assistant DA in Contra Costa County,” Journalist Susan Dyer Reynolds recently warned on X.

She recently wrote that she received a letter from East Bay attorney Jason Bezis addressing the Bontas “troubling ties to the Oakland FBI scandal.”

Her article continues:

“The Bontas led an effort to appoint David Brown, a Contra Costa County domiciliary, to a vacant Alameda County supervisor’s seat in November 2021,” the letter read. “Attorney General Bonta had to recuse [himself] from handling my clients’ quo warrant to application to remove Mr. Brown from public office. His chief deputy Venus Johnson handled the matter and Attorney General Bonta’s recusal, but she delayed taking action until the East Bay Times called out her delay in June 2022. Now Venus Johnson is applying to fill the vacancy in the office of Alameda County District Attorney.”

The Bontas “shamelessly warp legal standards and political norms in order to boost and protect their friends and allies and to shield them from accountability.”

Dyer Reynolds continues:

“As you may recall, not only are the Bontas associated with the Duong family and Mario Juarez, but also with a failed fuel company run by Juarez and a karaoke bar that was busted for human trafficking and narcotics sales where Duong allegedly laundered campaign funds. The average contribution the Duong family and their companies made to curry political favor with politicians was just over $5,000, but the Bontas received more than 30 times that amount for a grand total of $172,316.45. …”

Journalist Dyer Reynolds published a July 4, 2024, explosive exposé on Attorney General Rob Bonta and his wife, Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, “and their troubling ties to the Oakland FBI scandal” which involved Oakland Mayor Sheng Thai, Andy Duong, among others.

Mayor Thao was recalled in the November 2024 election.

According to a June 2024 Oaklandside article, Duong is “the son of California Waste Solutions’ founder David Duong. According to investigative records, Andy Duong allegedly recruited dozens of people to write checks to the campaigns of candidates running for Oakland City Council. He allegedly later reimbursed these people with his own money, or money from California Waste Solutions. It’s what’s known as a ‘straw donor’ scheme.”

As if Alameda County didn’t have enough corruption issues, George Soros funded Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price was also recalled in the November 2024 election. “Price, a former defense and civil rights attorney, was elected in 2022 with 53% of the vote after she promised to seek shorter sentences, promote rehabilitation and prosecute police misconduct,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Her playbook was much the same as former Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, and recalled San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin – “criminal justice reforms” resulting in reduced sentences, no enhancements, reassigning career prosecutors, and a devastating increase in crime in their counties.

Despite a failed recall attempt, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón was summarily rebuked in his reelection bid by Nathan Hochman, who won in a landslide in the November election, 61.5% to 38.5%.

Additionally, voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 36, 70.1%-29.9%, to increase penalties for certain drug crimes by increasing sentence lengths and level of crime, and effectively overturn some of the worst aspects of Proposition 47.

Similar to Gascón’s anti-justice policies, the very political DA Pamela Price “brokered a plea deal earlier this year [2023] that had many critics alarmed. The deal would have reduced sentencing in a triple murder case from 75 years to life in prison down to 15 years,” Fox News reported. Many prosecutors in her office resigned – also similar to Gascón’s office, which bled long time prosecutors.

Alameda County supervisors are preparing to appoint a new district attorney. And one of the candidates, Venus Johnson, has California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s fingerprints all over it, apparently preparing to replace Pamela Price with another very political DA. And that doesn’t set well with law-and-order prosecutors and voters.

Venus Johnson was also involved in a retaliation case while she worked for Contra Costa District Attorney Diana Becton, who is also a Soros funded DA. “Soros spent $275,000 in California backing Contra Costa County DA Diana Becton, who was selected by a board of supervisors to serve the rest of the term of her predecessor, who was convicted of felony perjury,” the New York Post reported.

Long time Contra Costa prosecutor Mary Knox filed a complaint with the Contra Costa Merit Board stating that she was retaliated against for her support of DA Becton’s political opponent after she was demoted to the Deputy District Attorney classification in the Merit System. Knox engaged in political activity during the 2018 election when she supported Becton’s political opponent, Paul Graves, for District Attorney. Knox produced evidence that she supported Graves and that Becton was aware of her support for Graves.

Becton took discriminatory action in retaliation for Knox’s political activities, the report says, including a significant demotion in a disrespectful and unprofessional manner; stripping Knox of all management roles, supervisory positions, and training responsibilities, along with much more.

Both Becton and Venus Johnson claimed that approximately fifteen (15) 15 attorneys had complained about Knox’s supervisory skills. However, this assertion lacks credibility. Although it is customary to document such complaints, Becton and Johnson both admitted that they had not documented the complaints.

“The Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors approved an out-of-court  settlement in the lawsuit brought by Mary Blumberg, Alison Chandler, Jill Henderson, Mary Knox, and Rachel Piersig against the County and its District Attorney’s Office, Knox, et al. v.  County of Contra Costa, et al.” the Contra Costa News reported. “The County agreed to pay the five plaintiffs a total sum of $2.2 million dollars, which includes  costs and attorneys’ fees.”

And now Rob Bonta is pushing his weight around to get his chief deputy Venus Johnson as the appointed DA replacement for recalled Pamela Price.

There is a reason these Soros DAs were recalled.