Mayor Thao speaks out on FBI raid: ‘This wouldn’t have gone down the way it did if I was rich.’

Facing mounting public pressure to address last week’s FBI raid of her home, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao took a defiant tone at a news conference Monday, saying she is not  the target of the investigation and questioning its timing with the campaign to have her recalled.

Reading from a prepared 10-minute statement at City Hall, Thao said in a voice shaking with emotion, “This wouldn’t have gone down the way it did if I was rich.”

She said a handful of billionaires from San Francisco and Piedmont are “hellbent on running me out of office.” She asked why the warrant was executed shortly after a campaign to oust her from office got enough signatures to put a recall on the November ballot.

The mayor called the timing of the raid, “troubling,” adding, “We should all be concerned.” And she claimed Fox News and Breitbart “fanned the flames.”

Thao, whose bio states that she overcame poverty and domestic violence, contended the government would have treated her differently if she had money and had gone to elite schools.

“I know that for sure because other former elected officials are sitting safely in their houses in the hills right now with campaign finance violations piling up, mountains of evidence that prove actual wrongdoing. Their front doors remain intact,” she said. 

The Oaklandside reported in March that former Mayor Libby Schaaf is being investigated for alleged ethics violations stemming from undisclosed control of independent political committees. Schaaf’s home has not been raided.

Last Thursday, the FBI searched Thao’s home on Maiden Lane in the Oakland hills, which she shares with her partner and their family. Agents carted off several bags and boxes, but the FBI has not said what they were looking for. On the same day, agents searched three properties associated with California Waste Solutions, Oakland’s recycling contractor. 

CWS has come under scrutiny by California’s Fair Political Practices Commission and the Oakland Public Ethics Commission for alleged violations of campaign finance laws that benefited multiple former and current Oakland City Council members. It’s not clear if Thursday’s raids were related to those allegations. 

“I want to be crystal clear,” Thao said at the news conference. “I can tell you with confidence that this investigation is not about me. I have not been charged with a crime, and I am confident that I will not be charged with a crime because I am innocent.”

After reading the statement, she did not take any questions.

The FBI has yet to release any information other than to confirm it conducted a raid on Maiden Lane. The warrants authorizing the action are sealed.

After Thao’s news conference, supporters of the recall campaign held one in the plaza in front of City Hall. They denounced the mayor’s characterization of their effort as being driven by right-wing forces and called on her to resign.

“We will continue to do what we are doing, and now the tide has turned,” said former Alameda County Judge Brenda Harbin-Forte, “In the meantime, Oakland can not afford to keep her on as a leader.”

FBI raids Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao’s home