District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis released a letter of recommendation Wednesday that she wrote for the son of a campaign contributor who has been indicted on charges of making illegal campaign contributions to her and other local politicians. Dumanis called it “much ado about nothing.”
The letter was written to the president of the University of San Diego recommending the school admit Susumo Azano, Jr., son of Mexican billionaire Jose Susumo Azano Matsura.
inewsource, KPBS and a number of other media organizations have pressed Dumanis for the letter since it was mentioned in a federal court hearing on Azano Matsura’s case in the beginning of June. The media coalition signed a final legal request for the letter Monday, threatening to sue the District Attorney if she did not comply by Tuesday at 5 p.m.
The news organizations have contended that the public is entitled to see the letter under the California Public Records Act. The letter carried particular relevance given the allegations against Azano Jr.’s father.
Dumanis had refused to comply with requests to produce the letter, citing privacy concerns by the family and a protective order in federal court, among other reasons.
U-T San Diego requested letters of recommendation written by other elected officials, specifically, the Board of Supervisors and the county sheriff. All complied.
Dumanis released the letter on KUSI’s television program Good Morning San Diego. KUSI was one of a few news outlets that had refused to join the the legal quest for the letter, claiming it “was protected speech and part of a federal investigation.”
Dumanis told KUSI she believed she had no obligation to release the letter, and only did it in “her personal capacity,” not as District Attorney.
“Our legal beagles in the office looked at it, I’ve looked at it, and I believe it’s not a public record,” Dumanis said. Dumanis said she wrote the letter at the request of Ernesto Encinas, a former San Diego police detective Dumanis said she’s known for more than 20 years. Encinas was indicted and has pleaded guilty in the pending federal case.
The recommendation was written on letterhead with Dumanis’ name, title and a seal, but in the interview, she said it wasn’t her official letterhead. In the letter, she calls Azano, Jr. “an exceptional student and individual,” but doesn’t mention any personal relationship she had with him or his father.
In the morning interview, Dumanis said she didn’t know Azano, Jr. personally and had “somebody prepare the letter” for her. In these situations “when someone I know that is vouching for a person, asks me to write a letter, I make it clear by not saying, you know, it’s somebody I know.”
In a statement released with the letter, Dumanis said, “Speculation over this letter has been without merit. Even though this is not a public record, but a personal letter, I have decided to release this letter in this case only. It is my hope that by doing so, we can all focus on holding the individuals charged with crimes responsible for their actions.”
Azano was indicted in January on charges of using straw donors to funnel more than $500,000 into San Diego politics with the help of Encinas, a Washington, D.C.-based “campaign guru” and a San Diego lobbyist. Azano allegedly gave $100,000 through a company he controlled to the PAC “San Diegans for Bonnie Dumanis for Mayor 2012, Sponsored by Airsam N492RM, LLC.”
Congressman Juan Vargas and former Mayor Bob Filner also allegedly received contributions from Azano. It is illegal for a non-U.S. resident to give to a political campaign.
In addition to inewsource, the following media organizations joined the legal challenge of Dumanis’ refusal to release the letter: City News Service, KFMB News 8, KNSD/NBC 7, KPBS, KSWB/Fox 5, the San Diego Daily Transcript, San Diego Press Club, Society of Professional Journalists San Diego, U-T San Diego, and Voice of San Diego.
Edited by inewsource Executive Director and Editor Lorie Hearn. Emily Burns contributed to this report.
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| Sexual Orientation | Sexual Orientation | Sexual Orientation | |||
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Lorie Hearn is the chief executive officer, editor and founder of inewsource. She founded inewsource in the summer of 2009, following a successful reporting and editing career in newspapers. She retired from The San Diego Union-Tribune, where she had been a reporter, Metro Editor and finally the senior editor for Metro and Watchdog Journalism. In addition to department oversight, Hearn personally managed a four-person watchdog team, composed of two data specialists and two investigative reporters. Hearn was a Nieman Foundation fellow at Harvard University in 1994-95. She focused on juvenile justice and drug control policy, a natural course to follow her years as a courts and legal affairs reporter at the San Diego Union and then the Union-Tribune.
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High-profile coverage included the historic state Supreme Court election in 1986, when three sitting justices were ousted from the bench, and the 1992 execution of Robert Alton Harris. That gas chamber execution was the first time the death penalty was carried out in California in 25 years.
In her nine years as Metro Editor at the Union-Tribune, Hearn made watchdog reporting a priority. Her reporters produced award-winning investigations covering large and small local governments. The depth and breadth of their public service work was most evident in coverage of the wildfires of 2003 and then 2007, when more than half a million people were evacuated from their homes.
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Mark J. Rochester began as inewsource managing editor in April 2021, having served as editor in chief at Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative newsroom in Manhattan. He was previously senior news director for investigations at the Detroit Free Press. Both newsrooms, he notes, shared a commitment to diversity and inclusion, and their investigative journalism often received national recognition for exposing problems impacting communities of color.
His family looks forward to returning to California, having spent more than seven years in San Francisco where Rochester was a senior manager for the Associated Press. While with the news cooperative, he led computer-assisted reporting training efforts around the West, both inside and outside of AP, and conducted a widely used analysis of the $74 million in campaign contributions that went toward the California gay marriage ballot initiative in 2008. The AP analyzed who gave and why and then made the data available to member newspapers. The resulting series of stories based on the data was AP’s 2009 Pulitzer nomination for Local Reporting.
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I don’t know District Attorney Dumanis, but I agree with her that this letter is much ado about nothing. Why then was she so reluctant to release it? It certainly doesn’t say anything about the son of the indicted Mexican citizen which violates his father’s or his own privacy or which implies improper influence upon the District Attorney to obtain this letter of recommendation. And the letter basically doesn’t say anything which would sway the judgment of a thoughtful and competent admissions officer at the University of San Diego. I hope the whole issue will now go away.
William E. Miller, resident of San Diego County
William I think the fight is about whether this type of correspondence is legitimately a ‘record’ that is subject to disclosure requirements. The content of the letter is nothing much. The fact that it’s on official letterhead and signed in her capacity as DA makes it something of concern.
Jenny R,
Thank you for the courtesy of your reply. on further refection, I think you are right. Anything written on an official letterhead and signed by an elected public official should be considered a public record. As District Attorney, Ms. Dumanis knows the law. My guess is that she resisted releasing the letter because she was embarrassed. To write a recommendation on official stationery for someone she did not know is an abuse of her office, and she knows it.
The point is Dumanis does know him. She attended a meeting at his home in Coronado and had a meeting with him and Sheriff Bill Gore. These are facts. Why is she lying?
Question for Ms. Tegarden,
Why would the District Attorney be meeting with Azano’s son and Sheriff Bill Gore? And would that meeting with the boy and the Sheriff have been before or after her letter of recommendation was written? I’m not sure what facts you are referring to. How can you be so sure that the District Attorney knows Azano’s son? I’ll stick with my belief that she was embarrassed about writing a letter of recommendation for a person she didn’t even know.