Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, FBI Raid, Andre Jones Investigation
FBI agents raided the home of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and several other locations as part of a corruption investigation. Former chief of staff Rania Webb alleged that Thao's boyfriend, Andre Jones, operated a pay-to-play scheme promising government appointments in exchange for campaign support. Thao has remained out of public view since the raid, while her attorney, Tony Brass, maintains she is cooperating with authorities.
sheng thao· oakland· fbi raid· andre jones· rania webb· corruption
00:00 Let's have a meeting! And from Northern Silicon Valley where everybody knows that tea is good for you. I'm John C. DuBois. Yeah, it is. Ask any Chinese person! Okay... You got a lot of them around there. Have you heard about your Chinese person in Oakland? She's Hmong. Oh she's not Chinese, she's Hmong? She's Hmong which is the Cambodian ethnic group. Oh okay I thought the whole
01:10 I thought the whole story... You want to hear this story? Actually, I clipped it for you. Yeah you should play it because I don't think anybody knows it No this is a part of the season of reveal It seems more like the season of corruption, but go ahead. It's been 48 hours since the FBI raided the home of Oakland Mayor Shang Tao along with at least two other locations and the mayor is nowhere to be seen We still don't know exactly what the FBI was looking for yesterday we heard the mayor side of the story sort of she did hire an attorney former prosecutor Tony Brass He suggested that there is no evidence that Tao was actually the target of the FBI investigation and she had no idea it was even happening. It was my assumption, that she would have been asked for information or documents or devices if they were needed and that she must have refused that if they got a search warrant so I'm quite surprised that the search warrant was the first sheet heard in this investigation The optics are bad
02:05 But the fact is that she is going to cooperate with the investigation and she would have done that in the first place. Brass also said Mayor Tao is working from a remote location because of the media circus around the raids, and that she will release a statement sometime next week. So what's great about this story is so she is among what you say Meng Tao, Chuck Tao? What does she Hmong. Hmong? What is the difference between Chinese and Mong? Well, the Mong are Cambodian which is anything but Chinese Wow It's a South Southeast Asian All that whole area it's not Chinese Do they eat sushi No I don't think so all right But what does beside the point of Mong
02:56 were kind of escaped from Cambodia during the period of Pol Pot and other situations. There's lots of Hmong in this... San Francisco Bay Area. In fact, if you go to a farmer's market two or three of the stalls are Hmong and they're great if you chat with them. They're great people I mean it's the Hmong are great people this has got to be a huge humiliation well to the Hmong population in the San Francisco Bay Area because this woman is apparently corrupt and everyone kind of suspected that wait but wait there's more! It's not her Yeah, this is the follow-up story. It's not her! It's the boyfriend!!
03:38 Yeah, you didn't know that did ya? Well I didn't actually I didn't hear this part of it But I can say this is that they've been trying to recall her Long before this investigation began because she's got some screwiness about her. Yeah including the not You know having some hard-on Regarding the ex chief of police and some other issues with the Police Department And and there's been a recall going on for at least six months and so there's yeah maybe the boyfriend has got something to do with it but she's suspicious. Well we have a former chief of staff who is blowing the whistle and they've got great video of her I guess during her
04:19 her election or I guess when she was chosen, elected as mayor and he's behind her leaning over like whispering in her ear like yeah yeah tell him this. Now it helps that he's black it just makes the whole thing fabulous. Rania Webb worked closely with and had access to Shantel that few people have for a year and four months Webb served as Tau's right-hand person, working as chief of staff when Tau was the District 4 council member. Webb says she volunteered and spent countless hours on Tau's mayoral campaign in 2022 She says she also led Tau's transition team after Tau won the election A lot of what is coming out now is the reason I resigned shortly thereafter winning the election She was more sad than surprised about FBI agents raiding Tau's home on Thursday
05:05 I wasn't surprised. I was like, finally! Finally the truth is coming out. Webb accuses Tao's boyfriend Andre Jones of being the mastermind and running pay-to-play schemes during Tao's campaign for mayor and after she won I had found out that Andre, her boyfriend was promising people jobs in our administration. Promising people appointments on different commissions and boards from out of the mouths of people that told me they were promised positions. They were promised board positions at the mouth of what they would always, Andre. You know that was who they'd say Andre promised me this." Webb claims Jones was controlling and calling the shots she says Tao went along with him. It's sad he is making her do things pushing her to do things that I don't believe she would do otherwise. Blame it on the boyfriend!
05:57 Blame it on the boyfriend. Oh man, blame it on the black guy! Yeah exactly! Oh brother... He looks pretty shady I gotta tell ya and they got good video of him like whispering in their ears yeah now blame it on the boyfriend that's great he is fantastic we are a little shake out eventually they've rated number of places I think his house may have been one of them but this has been going on for about a week or two So she's not to be found now. She's, she's in Cambodia. Yeah. She's in Cambodia. So we're kind of in the summer doldrums although you know right now it's the B teams most of New York
