At least for now, a judge has ruled that the cell phone records of Ross Mirkarimi's former campaign manager can not be subpoenaed in the Mayor's Ethics Commission investigation of the suspended sheriff. Also, Eliana Lopez has been granted an extended stay, by court order, of an additional seven weeks in Venezuela, where she's been since March with her and Mirkarimi's son Theo. She'll be staying by her ailing father, and seeking work in the film industry there, since the couple has been left without income since Mirkarimi's suspension. She's now set to return June 16.
Mirkarimi has been permitted daily telephone/Skype contact with his son, and the judge has now allowed for "peaceful contact" between him and Lopez for the purposes of arranging these calls.
Meanwhile, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, on behalf of Lee, has been trying to compel the testimony of Linnette Peralta Haynes, who managed Mirkarimi's campaign for sheriff, and get her to turn over months of cell phone records in order to prove a case that Mirkarimi and his aide conspired to dissuade witnesses in his domestic abuse trial.
Haynes has refused, and her attorney has argued, especially since we're not even talking about a court trial here anymore, that forcing Haynes to turn over her cell phone records "is outside the scope of what the mayor is entitled to." As the Chron reports, ahead of a hearing on the matter this morning, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn seems to agree, and he'll make his ruling official today.
As we mentioned before, this Ethics Commission business, and all the legal wrangling around it, will likely go on for months. A decision on Mirkarimi's fate may not come until Labor Day or later, in fact, and that puts us into campaign season for four members of the Board of Supervisors up for reelection who are also Mirkarimi's closest allies. Nine of the eleven supervisors will have to vote to remove Mirkarimi a super-majority that many have speculated will not come together. But we'll see.
