DA Boudin’s Personal Finances Raise Questions

And His War on Transparency

On July 8, 2021, CBS Channel 5 reported the arrest of Jerry Sanguinetti, the former Bureau Manager for the Department of Public Works.  The DA’s Integrity Task Force investigated and assessed felony perjury charges on Sanguinetti for his failure to disclose income external to his public employee position on the required City & County Ethic’s Commission’s Form 700— Statement of Economic Interests.

District Attorney Chesa Boudin added the following soundbite: Public employees must serve the public, not use their position for their own financial gain.  Failing to disclose financial conflicts of interests while profiting at the city’s expense violates public trust. When public employees break the law, my administration will hold them accountable. No one in San Francisco is above the law.

Just as Sanguinetti’s financial disclosures were required by the Conflict of Interest Code section 3.1-103, Boudin also has a mandatory obligation to comply with the same statute.

Did Boudin purchase a new residence in 2020?

Recently, several sources informed me that Boudin had purchased a new residence in the Sunset District.  Public records show that on October 7, 2020, the Suruwai Trust acquired a Sunset home from Rishi and Debbie for $2.25 million dollars.  A mere three weeks later, voting records indicate that Boudin changed his voter registration to the same Suruwai Trust’s address. 

If Boudin did purchase this home, he has a responsibility to disclose the transaction on Form 700 per the Conflict of Interest Code.  By not doing so, Boudin would have committed a similar perjury violation to what he arrested Jerry Sanguinetti for.  I could not find a Form 700 filed by Boudin.

Did Boudin rent a new residence in 2020?

Because Boudin’s name does not appear on the title of the Sunset home, we cannot conclude he purchased the Sunset home.  We also do not know who controls the Suruwai Trust, meaning Boudin could be a renter, and therefore under no obligation to complete a Form 700.  But that does not make Boudin innocent of Conflict of Interest Code violations.

City documents show that Rishi and Debbie as grantors sold the Sunset home to grantee Suruwai Trust plus a grantee named “Steven Bronson.”

Who is Steven Bronson?

In January 2019, the first month of Boudin’s candidacy for DA, five members of the Bronson family immediately contributed to his campaign.  The Bronson family is composed mostly of attorneys practicing law in St. Louis, Missouri, while “Steven Bronson” practices in La Jolla, California.   

This raises the question if the Steven Bronson listed as the “grantee” of the Sunset home is the same Steven Bronson that donated to Boudin’s election campaign.  The importance of this question is that there is an appearance this might be a contrived, related-party rental transaction between an elected official and a donor to the official’s campaign.  

Several conflict of interest ethical issues arise if Boudin is renting from a campaign donor:

1)    Is this an arm’s length rental transaction?

2)    How did the landlord determine the fair market rent if the home was apparently not offered to the public between October 7th and October 29, 2020?

3)    How can voters be assured that Boudin is not paying below market rent as the beneficiary of covert monthly political gifts?  Or does Boudin owe Bronson favors?  (Per Steve Bronson’s (donor) website, he specializes in class action lawsuits.  How do we know that Bronson does not receive the inside track to Boudin’s pursuit of alleged wrongdoings by corporations such as Handy.com?)

The Conflicts of Interest Code section 3.1-107 requires that Boudin “shall disclose income (including gifts) from any source.”  Clearly, without clarification from Boudin on these issues, there is reason to believe there could be a gift component to the Sunset home transaction and thus justification for further inquiry. 

Wouldn’t Chesa Boudin be the best person to put this issue to rest?

Boudin’s war against transparency:

To ensure that no one draws an improper conclusion, on August 20th and August 21st, I directly emailed Boudin and copied his DA advisor Rachel Marshall inquiring:

1)    Had he acquired even a partial financial interest in the Sunset home?

2)    Did he file a Form 700 that I missed on DataSF.org?

3)    Was grantee Steve Bronson the same person as the donor Steve Bronson?

Neither Boudin nor Marshall responded to my emailed questions.

Boudin: “No one in San Francisco is above the law.”

Think about this nebulous transaction: Either Boudin purchased real estate and committed perjury by not disclosing the purchase, OR a political donor from 500-miles away, just happened to select a house a half-a-mile from the political recipient’s current beach apartment, while concealing the title of the purchase in a trust.  Somehow, the recipient of the political donations—a surfing aficionado— was still able to find the vacant house rental near the beach and immediately move into it.  We are to believe this was all just a coincidence in a city that is drenched in public corruption.

Serious questions exist about our top law enforcement officer’s integrity.  He proclaims, “no one is above the law,” and arrested Sanguinetti for failing to disclose financial transactions on Form 700, while similarly not disclosing the details of his own conflicts of interest on a Form 700. 

Boudin is right.  He also is not above the law, and the slipperiness of his residential transaction with an apparent political donor demands that an independent agency investigate.