So here's an interesting twist: Attorneys for suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi say that a proxy for Mayor Ed Lee, city insider Walter Wong, approached Mirkarimi around the time of his guilty plea in the domestic abuse/false imprisonment case in March offering him an alternative job, either in or outside of city government, in exchange for his resignation. Mirkarimi's attorney in the current Ethics Commission hearing, Shepard Kopp, asked Mayor Lee on June 29 whether there was truth to this allegation that a third party had been authorized to offer Mirkarimi said job, and even to make a counter-offer when Mirkarimi refused, and Lee denied it. Now Kopp is suggesting that Walter Wong has gone missing, is not responding to phone calls, and might be subpoenaed to offer testimony about this.
The Mirkarimi camp is playing all of this pretty well in the press, with the Examiner now detailing these allegations of perjury on the part of the mayor, and saying that calls to Wong were met with some seeming obfuscation with one person saying that Wong was in China while a neighbor claims to have seen him leaving his house that day.
Says Kopp, "If he is subpoenaed and he doesn’t show up, I think everybody knows what the answer is."
At this rate, you can expect to know whether Mirkarimi keeps his job by September, maybe, after the Commission offers their recommendation to the Supervisors, and the Supervisors take a vote. Nine of them, mind you, will have to be in agreement.
[Examiner]
