Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price on Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2023, in Oakland, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price’s former spokesperson filed a legal claim Monday alleging that the county’s top prosecutor fostered a culture of anti-Asian bias while her employees tried to hide records from the press and circumvent open-records laws.
Patti Lee, who served as the face of Price’s administration for about six months in 2023, said the first-term district attorney openly called her enemies “the media and the Asians,” while creating a workplace that promoted racist views and frowned upon transparency with journalists.
Her allegations were included in a legal claim — a precursor to a lawsuit — filed with the county Monday seeking $1.5 million for emotional distress, unpaid wages, lost wages and attorneys’ fees. In it, Lee framed herself as a whistleblower sounding the alarm about unfettered abuses of open records laws in the weeks after Price barred a reporter from attending a press conference late last year.
“In this case, one of the primary transgressors of the discriminatory and retaliatory conduct was District Attorney Pamela Price herself, who fostered and encouraged an environment where retaliation and discrimination was an acceptable practice,” Lee’s legal claim said.
Lee declined a request for an interview by this news organization Monday evening, saying “I can’t make any comments at this point.”
The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the claim, which was first reported by The Berkeley Scanner.
The allegations come at a tumultuous time for Price, who is facing a recall effort barely a year into her tenure as the county’s first Black woman to hold that role. On Monday, recall organizers turned in more than 123,000 petition signatures to the county’s Registrar of Voters, who must determine within 10 days — a span that includes Tuesday’s primary election — whether enough valid signatures exist to put the question before voters.
Much of Lee’s legal claim centers on the fallout of a decision by Price to bar a journalist, The Berkeley Scanner’s Emilie Raguso, from attending a press conference on Nov. 29. The move — which Lee said she helped carry out at the “specific behest” of the district attorney — drew wide condemnation from press advocates and free speech groups.
Lee said that Price’s staff repeatedly tried to flout public records laws after Raguso and other Bay Area media outlets, including the Bay Area News Group, started inquiring about the decision through written requests for documents under the California Public Records Act.
By Dec. 4, “it became evident that instead of producing responsive records to CPRA requests, the Alameda County District Attorney chose instead to hide, delete, and change the records,” Lee’s claim said. She specifically named Haaziq Madyun, the office’s communications director, as someone who was “not being forthcoming with the documents,” and who “may have deleted or altered records” that were required to be released under state law. Madyun is a former TV news reporter.
On at least three occasions, Lee said she either refused to sign off on the office’s records responses, or voiced concerns to other staff members that documents were being withheld from the public. Ultimately, the DA’s office told the Bay Area News Group it had no documents responsive to the records request.
On Dec. 12, shortly after a meeting with the office’s custodian of records, Lee was handed a termination notice and told that she had eight minutes to clear out her desk, the claim says.
“Ms. Lee reasonably understood that this was likely because District Attorney Pamela Price was going to be arriving to the office soon and wanted Ms. Lee to be removed before she arrived,” the claim said. No reason was given for her firing, according to a copy of her termination letter included in the claim.
It all happened in a toxic, racist workplace that often targeted people of East Asian descent, according to the legal claim. Lee recalled an instance where Price openly said that her enemies were “the media and the Asians” during a conversation in front of Lee and an employee of Cole Pro Media, a public relations firm hired by Price’s office.
Lee said that such remarks were commonplace from Price, who would “often utter audible remarks under her breath” that accused Lee of leaking information to the press, as well as aiding Asian American activists and a leader of the recall effort targeting the district attorney.
Lee “would frequently hear derogatory comments about her race made by supervisory employees, including District Attorney Pamela Price herself,” the claim said. “Indeed, Ms. Price would constantly and openly make derogatory remarks against Asian Americans.” The claim did not specifically name anyone else who allegedly made such remarks.
Originally published at Jakob Rodgers