ADA Diana Teran Booked, Los Angeles DA Gascon Faces Another Complaint

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.

Here is the photo:

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 17^th, 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.

The decision whether or not to charge went through the office hierarchy, being approved each time, Neff claims. In October 2022, and a criminal complaint was filed.

Gascon even held a news conference about it, saying “I want to thank my prosecutors and investigators for their commitment to eliminating cyber intrusions against government entities and local businesses.  Data breaches are an ongoing threat to our digital way of life. When we entrust a company to hold our confidential data, they must be willing and able to protect our personal identifying information from theft. Otherwise, we are all victims.” 

But then something happened:  Uber-progressive Gascon had seemed to endorse former President Donald Trump’s charges that the 2020 election – and the soon to occur 2022 election- may have had an, um, “security problem.”

And all leftist hell broke loose.

Terrified he had offended the woke world, in November – for purely political reasons, says Neff – Gascon dropped the charges against Konnech, with the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors even agreeing to pay Yu $5 million dollars to settle a wrongful arrest/defamation case he filed.  

Neff pleaded with the supervisors at the meeting they approved the payout to not do so, but to no avail.

The charges against Yu were dropped and Neff was placed on administrative leave.  He has since been cleared of wrongdoing – even though Gascon implied that was the case when he publicly announced the dropping of the charges against Konnech.  Neff went back to work, but was shifted from the high-end, high-profile Public Integrity Division to the Welfare Fraud unit, hence the retaliation claim.

The Konnech case, the Teran issue, the dozens of lawsuits, the fleeing of his progressive backers and donors,  the abysmal poll standings, and the general street-level degradation that Gascon’s policies have caused all bode ill for his November re-election hopes.

So it seems we end on a happy note.