County supervisors are calling on the US Department of Justice to take another look at their plea deal with their former colleague Andrew Do after he pleaded guilty to a bribery scheme that redirected over $10 million to a nonprofit connected to his daughter.
The calls for a tougher sentence came after supervisors couldn’t agree on the issue earlier this month, with board members unable to reach a consensus on how they should go about calling for more punishments for Do.
Read: OC Supervisors Deadlock On How to Call for Harsher Sentencing on Andrew Do
The letter supervisors agreed to send in a 4-1 vote calls for federal prosecutors to reassess the plea deal and determine if they’re punishing Do enough for his crimes.
“There is a strong public interest to ensure that, as an elected official, Andrew Do did not receive special treatment from the federal prosecutors,” reads the proposal from Supervisor Janet Nguyen. “The lack of additional charges against other individuals complicit in this case raises concerns about disparate justice and the perception of limited accountability.”
Nguyen didn’t talk much at Tuesday’s meeting, saying she’d already said everything that needed to be said.
“I don’t want to rehash what we did,” Nguyen said of the previous debate on the supervisors’ dais regarding the issue. “It seems like the tactics of just trying to run out the clock.”
But in a statement after the meeting, Nguyen said Do’s current deal that would give him a max of five years in prison is too lenient.
“A federal prosecutor who looks at the totality of the evidence will hopefully come to the same conclusion as the general public: Andrew Do is getting a special deal because he was a public official,” Nguyen said. “I want to see justice in this case. Five years in prison is not punishment, Andrew will be out of custody in the blink of an eye.”
Read: Former OC Supervisor Andrew Do Pleads Guilty to Bribery Scheme
Other supervisors also pointed to the revelation that Do was continuing to receive emails detailing the county’s legal plans even after leaving the dais, which Do’s lawyer reported to the county, though it remains unclear if Do read the emails.
Supervisor Don Wagner, the one supervisor to vote against the letter to the US Attorney, pointed out how the county had zero evidence that Do had used any of that information against them or even read the emails, and that it was not “procedurally appropriate,” for supervisors to intervene.
“Not our role, not our lane,” Wagner said. “We look bad piling on and saying we don’t trust the justice system.”
He also noted that the deal was already being reassessed according to the OC District Attorney’s office, and that more information could come from that.
Kimberly Edds, a spokesperson for OC District Attorney Todd Spitzer, did not return requests for comment to confirm if the deal was being reviewed.
Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento encouraged board members to look at sending letters to the judge in the future when Do’s sentencing arrives, but it remains unclear if those will be filed.
Supervisor Doug Chaffee said he wanted to support the letter because they were the injured party.
“We are a victim. This is a statement from the victim,” Chaffee said. “We do speak for those who were victimized in the county as well…we need to express our feelings.”
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.