Corruption witness says ex-South Bay sheriff retaliated

SAN JOSE — An employee of former Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith has filed an explosive whistleblower lawsuit against her old boss, accusing Smith of repeatedly harassing and intimidating her as she served as a key witness in a corruption probe that led Smith to step down last year after more than two decades in office. 

The lawsuit, filed last month by one-time Smith staff member Lara McCabe, contends the sheriff’s office continued alienating her even after a new administration assumed command, and that the county staff failed to protect her against the retaliation even after she reported their conduct.

McCabe, whose attorneys declined comment, makes several damning claims in the lawsuit, mostly against Smith. She attests that Smith, feeling the pressure of a criminal and later a civil grand jury investigation, openly demeaned, belittled and defamed her after she was summoned multiple times to testify in proceedings over Smith’s issuance of concealed-carry weapons permits.

At one point, McCabe said Smith explicitly picked out a fall guy for the CCW scandal, in which Smith’s office was accused of systemically leveraging the coveted gun permits for political and donor support. As the criminal investigation was underway — but not yet publicly acknowledged by the district attorney’s office — McCabe describes in her lawsuit a March 2020 meeting of Smith’s top brass during which the then-sheriff laid out who was going to take the blame.

“What we need to discuss is messaging,” McCabe recounted Smith telling the group. From there, Smith pointed to her undersheriff Rick Sung and said, “The message is he will be going to jail, not me.”

Sung was indicted later that year on two sets of corruption and bribery allegations, one of which accuses him of holding up the release of a Smith donor’s CCW permit renewal until he donated the use of his San Jose Sharks luxury suite so the sheriff’s office could host a private party in 2019 celebrating Smith’s re-election to a sixth term.

Smith did not respond to emails requesting comment for this story.

McCabe, who worked as a civilian administrator for Smith, was a key witness for that allegation in both the criminal and civil grand jury investigations, testifying that Smith ordered her to purchase cheaper tickets for the same Sharks game, and stated that she wanted to do so expressly to disguise her use of the suite and avoid gift-reporting requirements for elected officials. 

McCabe was also one of two high-level civilian members of Smith’s staff who testified that the former sheriff purposely stalled progress on an information-sharing agreement with a civilian law enforcement auditor by delaying meetings with deputy labor unions.

During the course of the DA corruption probe, McCabe claims in her lawsuit that Smith was fully aware she had been contacted by investigators, “became desperate to find out any information regarding the investigation” and tried to get McCabe to reveal what she told them. On another occasion, McCabe said she was intimidated when Smith “very clearly stated that she reads transcripts, so she knows who is involved in the investigation and what they have said.”

The lawsuit claims this behavior escalated, and that Smith “accused Ms. McCabe of providing false statements throughout the investigation,” and at a staff meeting proclaimed she would be deemed innocent of the corruption allegations because they “are all liars, even Lara.”

McCabe also describes a bizarre episode the night before she testified before a criminal grand jury in 2020 when Smith called her on the phone “upset and crying,” telling her the investigation “was unfair and that she felt alone,” in a conversation that lasted more than half an hour.

Sung was put on leave after the criminal charges and quietly retired last year. Besides the indictment over the Sharks suite, he is also charged alongside a sheriff’s captain and an Apple security executive with arranging a donation of 200 iPads to the sheriff’s office to speed up the concealed-carry weapons permitting for a group of his security employees.

Smith was never criminally charged and, like Sung, refused to testify to a criminal grand jury by invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. 

Still, she retired last year after a civil grand jury filed corruption accusations against her, which was followed by a civil trial jury finding her guilty of many of the same favoritism allegations in the criminal case. The civil outcome formally removed her from office, though that was entirely symbolic because she already had signaled her retirement and even resigned mid-trial in an attempt to nullify a verdict.

McCabe states in her lawsuit that on multiple occasions, she contacted the county administration and county counsel to report the intimidation and harassment she was experiencing. But despite getting an assurance that a witness intimidation allegation would be forwarded to the district attorney’s office, and her repeated pleas to be moved to another county position, she contends that no one effectively intervened.

“Ms. McCabe felt vulnerable, threatened, and alone, because the county was failing to take any action to protect her (or others) as a witness in an investigation, because Sheriff Smith was continuing to harass, retaliate against, and threaten her, and knew there was no one whom she could trust in the agency and who would offer support,” the lawsuit reads.

She adds that the county poured more salt on the wound when she was made to sit with the sheriff’s staff during a county Board of Supervisors meeting in August 2021 when it approved a “no confidence” vote for Smith based on a board referral that included references to McCabe’s testimony. 

More than a year later, in the fall of 2022, as Smith’s civil corruption trial was underway, McCabe said Smith ordered her to retrieve documents, a task she says was aimed at preparing Smith and her defense attorney to counter McCabe’s own testimony in the same proceedings.

“Smith had not only misused her office and position of authority over Ms. McCabe to pressure and attempts to threaten, intimidate and influence her testimony, but as Ms. McCabe’s supervisor, in Ms. McCabe’s place of work, to force Ms. McCabe to assist Sheriff Smith’s own interests,” the lawsuit states.