Ed Jew and the FBI

By Tim Redmond

I'm not going to jump to any conclusions here; I'm an innocent-until-proven-guilty kind of guy. But I will say that there's some very funky looking stuff in the daily papers right now about Sup. Jew. The Chron had the basics in its first-day story, but raised more questions than it answered, especially around the fact that Jew doesn't seem to be living in the house that he owns in the Sunset. The Sunday Chron story follows that up a bit, exploring the fact that Jew's wife and daughter apparently live in Burlingame.

But the Examiner had the most juicy bit of the scoop, something that somehow got left out the the Chron story (and now is not, apparently, on the Ex website, or at least I couldn't find it.)

Here's the Ex:

"Jew said the storeowners [who needed help with permits] paid $40,000 for [consulting] services, half of which ended up in his safe and which, he said, he planned to spend on community needs in his district, including playgrounds. Jew said FBI agents Friday confiscated the $20,000. He did not elaborate on how the money came to be in his safe."

Whoa. $20,000 in cash in his safe, and he "did not elaborate" on it. That's a question I would have pushed a bit more if I were the Ex reporter on that story, but it's too late now: Jew has a lawyer, and won't be making any more comments.

But we do know the FBI search warrent mentioned that the agents were looking for cash, and had a long list of currency serial numbers.

So let's see if I've got this right: Jew sends some constituents to a consultant, the constitutents pay him -- not the consultant -- $40,000 cash, and $20,000 ends up in his safe. If that's true -- and again, I'm basing this on one Examiner story that seems to have vanished from the web (the paper is now using a brief AP report on its site) -- it sure looks bad.

And to answer the question Brian poses at Calitics -- if Jew was forced to resign over this, who would replace him? -- that's easy. The mayor gets the appointment, and it will be Newsom's buddy, Doug Chan.

Comments (2)

Alexis:

Doug Chan? Maybe. I'm thinking Phil Ting. Phil was set to run for D-4 before Mabel Teng resigned and if he got appointed, wouldn't Newsom get to appoint a replacement for Assessor?

Posted by Alexis | May 23, 2007 02:32 AM

anon:

Hey here is one link from the Ex which refers to the $20g from his safe:
http://www.examiner.com/a-739354~Newsom_surprised_by_FBI_raid_of_Ed_Jew_s_office.html

Posted by anon | May 23, 2007 09:58 AM

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